I hope you are all getting ready for the holidays today as our trusty band of travelers are taking Chicago by storm. Thank goodness not literally. The weather is perfect to travel up and down the Magnificent Mile of Michigan Avenue and to stroll through the German Christmas Market in Daley Square.

For so many of us living in Northwest Ohio, Christmas becomes the only real focus for a holiday season. However some know of the Jewish Holiday- Chanukah (OK you spell it the way you think it should be spelled), we have heard about Kwanzaa and then the Muslim holidays that occur mostly in November and January. It is easy for me to know when the Muslim holidays occur because I live across the street from a Mosque.

In some parts of the country, there have been rumors, innuendoes and just plain falsehoods about the postal service’s role in commemorating these events on postage stamps. Let’s start with the EID stamps. First despite email rumors the stamps pre-dated the 9/11 attacks, do not “honor” terrorism and were not issued at the behest of President Obama. One more rumor brings it all home to me is that it commemorates the Muslim Christmas. None of that is true just like Chanukah is not the Jewish Christmas but we’ll get into that later. Rather, the stamp is part of the Postal Services’ “Holiday” stamp series and has been issued for the past several years.