Stamps of Romania: Christmas Issue (2015)

The Feast of Nativity, popularly called Christmas, is one of the major Christian feasts and is celebrated with great solemnity every year on December 25th.

This celebration marks an important event in the history of Christianity, the birth of Jesus Christ from the Virgin Mary, in a cave in Bethlehem of Judea. According to the New Testament Gospels, Jesus Christ was born in the city of Bethlehem, where Mary, mother of Jesus, accompanied by her fiancé Joseph, came from Nazareth for the census ordered by proconsul Quirinius, during the time of Emperor Octavian Augustus. Finding no room in the city, they were housed in a pastoral cave where the Holy Child was born. This feast of the joy of man’s encounter with God is celebrated around the world by different religious traditions, as well as secular ones. Christ the Lord, who was born as a man in the cave in Bethlehem of Judea, is the eternal Son of God, the incarnate Logos, He in, through and for whom heaven and earth, the whole universe were made.

On the occasion of the Sacred Feast, Romfilatelia marks this important event for the whole of Christianity, as well as the Romanian people’s culture, by the CHRISTMAS 2015 postage stamp issue. This year, the stamp of the issue depicts the image of the Birth of Jesus icon, painted by Gheorghe Tattarescu.

Dating from the 19th century, the icon of the Nativity of Jesus, created by Tattarescu, distinguishes itself by the sense of measure, the clarity of its compositions, through the skill and the design finesse, as well as the sober colors and the dignified expression of the characters. Tattarescu uses the oil painting technique, one of the oldest and most popular painting techniques.

The icon is surrounded by a golden and narrow frame, and on the right, Joseph and the Virgin Mary, who kneels and holds the child Christ in her arms are presented. Through the clouds the guiding star shines into the manger, the long awaited sing by the Magi who welcomed the world’s Emperor with gold, myrrh and frankincense. The dark background, similar to the chiaroscuro technique, lets shine the red, yellow, blue and white colors from the characters’ faces and clothes.

The birth of the Saviour Christ is, in the words of St. Grigorie the Theologian, “not a celebration of creation, but a celebration of recreating the world”.