WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Postal Service today reissued the Eid stamp in the Holiday Celebrations series.

First issued in 2001, the stamp commemorates the two most important festivals in the Islamic calendar: Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. On these days, Muslims wish each other “eid mubarak,” the phrase featured in calligraphy on the stamp, which translates as “blessed festival” or “may your religious holiday be blessed.”

Eid al-Fitr marks the end of fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan with prayers, feasting, exchanging gifts, and visiting family and friends. Signifying “The Feast of Sacrifice,” Eid al-Adha occurs approximately two months and ten days after Eid al-Fitr. Eid al-Adha comes at the end of the hajjae, the annual period of pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca and commemorates Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail. The stamp was developed with the help of Muslim consultants and experts in Islamic studies.

Employing traditional methods and instruments to create the stamp’s design, Arlington, VA-based calligrapher Mohamed Zakariya chose a script known in Arabic as thuluth and in Turkish as sulus. He describes it as “the choice script for a complex composition due to its open proportions and sense of balance.”

Zakariya used homemade black ink, and his pens were crafted from seasoned reeds from the Middle East and from Japanese bamboo from Hawaii. The paper was specially prepared with a coating of starch and three coats of an alum-and-egg-white varnish, then burnished with an agate stone and aged for more than a year. Zakariya’s black-and-white design was then colored by computer. The colors chosen for the stamp — gold script on a blue background — evoke great works of Islamic calligraphy from the past.

The Postal Service produced 40 million 41-cent Eid stamps in sheets of 20 that are available for purchase at local Post Offices, online at www.usps.com/shop, or by calling 800-STAMP-24 on Sept. 28.

Eid Stamp Fact Sheet

Philatelic Products

There are two philatelic products available for this stamp issue:

• 570861 — First-Day Cover, $0.79
• 570893 — Cancellation Keepsake (FDC w/Pane), $8.99

How to Order First-Day Covers

Stamp Fulfillment Services also offers first-day covers for new stamp issues and Postal Service stationery items postmarked with the official first-day-of-issue cancellation. Each item has an individual catalog number and is offered in the quarterly USA Philatelic catalog. Customers may request a free catalog by calling 800-STAMP-24 or by writing to:

INFORMATION FULFILLMENT
DEPT 6270
US POSTAL SERVICE
PO BOX 219014
KANSAS CITY MO 64121-9014

How to Order the First-Day-of-Issue Postmark

Customers have 60 days to obtain the first-day-of-issue postmark by mail. They may purchase new stamps at their local Post Office, by telephone at 800-STAMP-24, or at The Postal Store website at www.usps.com/shop. They should affix the stamps to envelopes of their choice, address the envelopes to themselves or others, and place them in a larger envelope addressed to:

EID STAMP
POSTMASTER
SPECIAL CANCELLATIONS
PO BOX 92282
WASHINGTON DC 20090-9998.

After applying the first-day-of-issue postmark, the Postal Service will return the envelopes through the mail. There is no charge for the postmark. All orders must be postmarked by Nov. 27, 2007.

# # #

Please Note: For broadcast quality video and audio, photo stills and other media resources, visit the USPS Newsroom at http://about.usps.com/news/welcome.htm.

For reporters interested in speaking with a regional Postal Service public relations professional on this issue, please go to http://about.usps.com/news/media-contacts/usps-local-media-contacts.pdf.

A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 151 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. With 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $65 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 35th in the 2011 Fortune 500. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency for six years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.

Follow USPS on Twitter @USPS_PR and at Facebook.com/usps.