For the first time in its four-year history of issuing special Christmas stamps, the US Post Office Department has selected a religious theme. With more than a billion Christmas stamps being sold, our readers should by now be familiar with the red, green, and yellow horn-blowing angel Gabriel that served originally as a weather vane in Boston in 1840 and which a hundred years later was captured in watercolor by Boston artist Lucille Gloria Chabot. The painting from which this year's 5-cent stamp was designed now hangs in the Washington National Gallery of Art.
This week The Journal, too, exceeds itself in producing a similar "first." To round out nearly a year of covers marked by masterworks of art, the editors have selected for this week's cover the tranquil Nativity scene by 15th century Flemish painter Petrus Christus, a follower of Jan Van Eyck, as most truly communicating the spirit