As a lover of fall vibes, monster movies, and all things spooky, it makes my little black heart happy to receive Halloween cards in the mail. But more often than not, they’re franked by a simple flag stamp. Where are all the spooky, Halloween-themed stamps?
Let’s take a quick look at the numbers. And then, more importantly, let’s do something about it!
How many Halloween stamps are there?
When I am curious about topics depicted on stamps, there are usually two places I initially check. The first is Colnect.com, which has a keyword-based search feature that churns out surprisingly informative results. The second is the American Topical Association’s checklist topic page.
A Colnect search for Halloween stamps generates only 99 (as opposed to 41,942 with the keyword “Christmas”). And of these, dozens are designs from a personalized stamp series in France. Eliminating those, duplicates, and false results, Colnect only lists around three dozen unique “Halloween” stamps comprising a handful of sets from around the world.
That’s a very low number, but the number on the ATA Halloween checklist is not much higher at 177. This list likely includes stamps depicting witches, goblins, jack-o-lanterns, black cats, and other Halloween images that would not have come up in my singular keyword search on Colnect. But compare that to the number of stamps for ATA’s New Year’s (610) or Lunar New Year (3,107) lists, and you begin to see how few Halloween stamps have been issued in the last 184 years. Christmas stamps have been so numerous that ATA has a full Christmas category, broken down into more manageable subtopics, such as ornaments (264), carols/caroling (434), Santa Claus (768), and religious art (6,243), among others. Each subcategory, you will note, features more stamps than Halloween.
How many people celebrate Halloween?
So, why are Santa Claus stamps more than four times more popular than all Halloween stamps combined? Perhaps it has something to do with the number of people who celebrate those respective holidays.
According to the National Retail Federation’s annual survey, 72% of Americans (248.7 million people) plan to celebrate Halloween this year. That number is up considerably from the mid-pandemic slump of 58% (192.2 million).
Let’s contrast those numbers with Christmas. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2017 survey, 90% of Americans (292.8 million) celebrate Christmas either as a religious or cultural holiday. That figure was down from 92% (293.8 million) in 2013, and appears to be down further to 88% (299.2 million) in 2023. However, with America’s population growth over the last decade, even a lower percentage of people in 2023 equates to a higher net number than in 2013.
So, we see roughly nine out of ten people celebrate Christmas, as opposed to six or seven out of ten who celebrate Halloween. That may not sound like a big difference, but as we see from the numbers, that equates to between 50–100 million people!
Why are there not more Halloween stamps?
Okay, so more people overall celebrate Christmas. But the nearly 250 million people celebrating Halloween this year are nothing to scoff at!
So why are there not more Halloween stamps?
My theory is that the USPS creates holiday stamps based on interest and demand. (Shocking theory, I know!)
According to Hallmark, arguably the biggest name in the greeting card industry, Americans send more than 1.3 billion Christmas cards every year. Statistics from AmericanGreetings.com show that 73% of Americans reported sending holiday cards in 2021, with 60% saying they send holiday cards consistently each year. Whoa!
In contrast, the Chicago Tribune reports that only 28 million Halloween cards are sent each year. That makes Halloween only the seventh most popular card-sending holiday, behind Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Easter, and graduation.
How can we encourage the USPS to issue more Halloween stamps?
From the numbers, we see that Americans send roughly 46 times more Christmas cards than Halloween cards. Knowing that, perhaps the best way to encourage the USPS to issue more regular Halloween stamps in the future would be to…
SEND MORE HALLOWEEN CARDS!
The 5-Card Halloween Mail Challenge!
Let’s get more Halloween cards into the mail stream, and let’s show our postal service that there is a demand for new spooky postage stamp designs!
This year, I’d like to challenge all my readers to send at least five Halloween cards to friends, family, or fellow Halloween enthusiasts! If you have Halloween stamps saved in your collection, consider using them for this challenge.
Here are a few more ways you can demonstrate your interest in more frequent Halloween stamp issues:
- If you do not have Halloween stamps in your collection right now or if you used them all up last year, use other stamps on the Halloween cards you are sending, but add a box next to the stamps that reads “Halloween stamp here”.
- Search the USPS postal store using the keyword “Halloween”. An influx of searches for that keyword will tell webmasters that there is interest in that topic.
- Share your love of Halloween stamps! Post your favorite spooky topics to social media and tag the USPS. Don’t forget to include the hashtag #HalloweenCardChallenge.
- Stock up on Halloween stamps for next year! Right now, the USPS postal store has Day of the Dead (2021) notecard and stamp sets available. Or you can scoop up whatever you see at stamp shows and online before next year’s celebrations.
I hope you’ll join me in the 5-Card Halloween Mail Challenge! If you’re not sure who to send all your cards to, I’d love to receive one. You can reach me at Sarah G., P.O. Box 18653, Asheville, NC 28814.
What do you think? Do you enjoy receiving Halloween mail as much as I do? Will you join me in the 5-Card Halloween Mail Challenge? What Halloween stamp designs would you like to see? Let me know your thoughts!
Armchair Philately 
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