Christmas Spray Cancels

There are "hundreds" of posts for and about Christmas - stamps, cards, letters, seals, postmarks and................!!!

Last year had a nice one about US spray Holiday cancels.
Of course can't find it now.

This one just came in and I thought it a rather nice and clear strike (spray)
The previous discussion was they are easily smeared.
(if more appropriate place, please move)
Thanks,
pat

Here is a older Christmas spray cancel that is rarely seen.

Several US Presidents have sent out Christmas cards to family, friends and supporters. I don't know how often it was done from locations other than Washington DC, but during the term of President George Bush 43, his Christmas cards were mailed with the following spray cancel showing their point of origin to be Crawford, Texas, near his Texas ranch.

These were actually processed at the USPS center in Austin Texas. This group shows the machine ID for four different transports used at that center. Each transport has two spray positions, "T" and "L", so we have 1T, 1L, 2T, 2L, 3T, 3L, and 4T, 4L. I believe there were one or two other transports used, but I can't put my hands on an example.

The covers in this group are from envelopes which I provided and which were processed courtesy of a contact from that Austin Processing Center, so they should be considered philatelic in origin.



Most of the ones found in collections, and in the marketplace today, are from the actual Christmas cards, with the example below from an eBay listing.




Edited to add...
The same spray cancel was also used on his Christmas cards in 2006 and 2008.

Mike

Another 2022 design:

I have received 4 different elf "Happy Holidays" spray-on cancels in my 2022 December mail. Are there more than these 4? Perhaps 5?

Just wondering,

Linus

From Oakland Calif.
Interesting info on ID's from different machines.
Thanks,
pat

A sampling of holiday messages from the earlier-style inkjet sprays:


The pictorial inkjet sprays go back to at least 2005 (following several steel-die pictorials and slogans in the facer-cancelers.
Sometimes there are multiple spray designs in a year.
Some designs are used for multiple years.
All shown here are cropped from full envelopes.
An incomplete showing, but fairly close with those already posted by others.

One of my favorites for the position of the stamp and cancel, which I have posed before:

I may not be totally correct but 38 years in USPS working with Processing Plant Maintenance Managers, I was privy to facer/canceller daily maintenance routine. Each day, each machine is taken out of service for a minimum of 2 hours for pre-flight inspection & cleaning. The mechanic cleans the spray heads & fills the ink well. Since the spray cancels are digital, they can change the design with small local program changes. Special events for local, codes for processing building or location, slogans etc. They are pre-packaged in National software updates & the local Plant Maintenance technician can change according to latest update..

John,
Do you know if the USPS announces which PO's will be using the cancels?
Thanks,
pat

eligies - just saw your post. Thanks

Short answer, no.

The longer answer, building on elegies post above and other memories, the nationally-distributed slogans would be used as the operator chose in one or more of their spray heads.

"Back in the day" of steel slogan dies, the Postal Bulletins would annually announce approved periods of use if an office had the die in inventory (like "March is Red Cross Month", "Mail Early for Christmas", etc). I have not checked to see if these instructions are still published in the Postal Bulletin, but it seems logical that periods of use would be a part of the instructions in the software updates mentioned by elegies.

For the "where?", it could be any of the large mail processing enters. I would not expect any lists.

HAPPY "WHO-LIDAYS" from the U.S. postal Service!


(Looked closer - not spray)

Two more cities.
One with a nice Computer Vended Postage (CVP) forever