Every year since 1970, the U.S. Postal Service has in effect been running a “Christmas Stamp Poll” by offering the nation’s greeting card senders a choice between religious and secular themes for the stamps they use to send cards. This year, for example, postal customers can choose from among four secular themes or one religious theme. The secular themes include a snow man, a toy soldier, a jack-in-the-box, and a reindeer, complete with red nose (guess who).

The religious theme stamp depicts a circa 1497 painting of Madonna and Child by Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano that hangs in the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh.

The results of this year’s poll, of course, will not be known until well after Christmas, but in 1992, secular designs outsold religious theme stamps by 59 percent to 41 percent.

Historically, secular themes have been more popular than religious ones by 56 percent to 44 percent. (Christmas stamps first came out in the U.S. in 1962, but before 1970, both secular and religious themes were never available during the same year.)

Religious themes on Christmas stamps were most popular from 1970 to 1972, but ever since, with the exceptions of 1978 and 1985, stamps featuring secular motifs of the holiday season have outsold those with religious themes.

The stamps are big business for the Postal Service, which sells an average of 1.5 to 2 billion of them each year.

In 1992, for example, 1,579,404,000 Christmas stamps were sold. At a cost of 29 cents each, that meant the Postal Service sold a total of $458 million in Christmas stamps.

When the series of stamps was started in 1962, it cost only four cents to send a Christmas card, but by now with the first-class rate at 29 cents, the Postal Service routinely rakes in over $400 million each Christmas season.

Over the years, total sales add up to over 50 billion Christmas stamps, with an aggregate value of over $7 billion.

The most popular religious motif was a depiction of the Angel Gabriel from the painting “The Annunciation” by Jan van Eyck. It sold 1.4 billion copies in 1968. That’s a lot of angels.

Despite its popularity, however, angels have been offered as religious motifs only two other times.

Creche scenes were featured in three years, but like municipal creches, which have been banished because of potential church and state problems, postal representations of the Nativity have not been seen since 1976, when in the spirit of the nation’s bicentennial native-born John Singleton Copley’s Nativity painting was featured.

Instead, since 1978, Old Master depictions of the Madonna and Child have been presented to the public for 16 years in a row, including two each by Botticelli and Raphael.

The most popular secular design was issued in 1969, and depicted a winter scene in Norway, Maine, painted about 1870 by an anonymous primitive artist. It sold 1.7 billion copies.

Depictions of toys (27 percent) and Santa Claus (18 percent) have accounted for nearly half of the secular designs issued by the Postal Service on Christmas Stamps.

Next in frequency of issue have been designs featuring Christmas trimmings such as poinsettia plants, wreaths, holly, and mistletoe (12 percent) and Christmas trees and ornaments (10 percent).

Outdoor winter scenes such as reproductions of Currier and Ives engravings have represented 6 percent of the stamp designs, and depictions of sleds and horse and sleighs and skating for 10 percent. Snowmen represent 4 percent of the secular stamp offerings.

Rounding out the list are antique weather vanes with Christmas motifs, a mailbox full of Christmas cards, a reindeer with requisite red nose, and of course (all together, now) … a partridge in a pear tree.