Holy Christmas MMXXIV - €1.25

The Christmas 2024 series is intended to introduce us symbolically and philatelically to the Jubilee Year, which will begin on 24 December 2024 with the opening of the Holy Door of St Peter's Basilica and will end one year later. For this reason, the graphic elements typical of Christmas are flanked by others associated with the Holy Year, including the official logo of the Jubilee 2025: the series depicts, in the € 1.25 value, the Christmas angel holding a scroll that recites Glory to God and Peace on Earth, an extract of the incipit of the Gloria hymn, the song sung by the angels for the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, a joyful announcement of the embrace between heaven and earth.The second value depicts Jesus blessing in the manger and once again a scroll bearing the inscription Spes non confundit, ‘hope does not disappoint’ (RM 5.5), a clear reference to the Bull of the Jubilee and the motto itself of the Holy Year Pilgrims of Hope. Here the focus is on the manger, a humble object of immense significance, and as Pope Francis says in his homily at the mass on 24 December 2022: 'to find the meaning of Christmas we must look there. “Yet why is the manger so important? Because it is the sign, and not by chance, of Christ’s coming into this world. It is how he announces his coming. It is the way God is born in history, so that history itself can be reborn. What then does the manger tell us? It tells us three things, at least: closeness, poverty and concreteness." Like Christmas, the Jubilee will offer us a concrete opportunity to renew our faith and rediscover, in Christ, the hope that never disappoints.