About This Stamp
With this vibrant stamp design, the U.S. Postal Service® continues its tradition of celebrating Kwanzaa. This annual non-religious holiday, which takes place over seven days from December 26 to January 1, brings family, community, and culture together for many African Americans. December 26, 2016, marked the 50th anniversary of this widely celebrated holiday.
The colorful stamp art features a young African-American woman as the embodiment of Africa. She wears a lavender dress with a collar of African design that also appears in her earring. In front of the woman sits a large purple bowl. It overflows with fruits and vegetables, symbolizing the abundance of African first harvest celebrations.
Created in 1966, Kwanzaa draws on African traditions, deriving its name from the phrase “first fruits” in Swahili, a widely spoken African language. It has its origins in first harvest celebrations that occurred across the African continent in ancient and modern times. Kwanzaa synthesizes and reinvents these communal traditions as a contemporary celebration of African-American culture.
The three primary colors of Kwanzaa — red, black, and green — also hold special significance for the holiday and its participants. Red indicates the blood shed during struggles endured by those of African descent, black symbolizes the African people, and green signifies growth and renewal. Adopted to help unify African Americans from a wide array of religious and cultural backgrounds, these colors also appear on the Kwanzaa flag, which is prominently displayed during the weeklong celebration.
Artist Synthia Saint James worked with art director Greg Breeding, who designed the stamp.
This is the sixth stamp design issued by the U.S. Postal Service in celebration of Kwanzaa. The first Kwanzaa commemorative stamp was issued in 1997. New designs were also issued in 2004, 2009, 2011, and 2013.
Kwanzaa was issued as a Forever® stamp. This Forever stamp will always be equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce price.
Stamp Art Director, Designer, and Typographer
Greg Breeding
Greg Breeding is a graphic designer and principal of Journey Group, a design company he co-founded in 1992, located in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was creative director until 2013, at which time he began serving as president and continued in that role through 2023.
Breeding’s fascination with modernism began while studying design at Virginia Commonwealth University. His affinity with the movement continues and motivates his ongoing advanced studies at the Basel School of Design in Switzerland most every summer.
As an art director for postage stamp design since 2012, Breeding has designed more than 100 stamps covering a diverse array of subjects, from Star Wars droids and Batman to Harlem Renaissance writers and the transcontinental railroad.
His work has been recognized in annual design competitions held by Graphis, AIGA, PRINT magazine, and Communication Arts.
Breeding lives in North Garden, Virginia, with his wife and enjoys nothing so much as frolicking on the floor with his grandchildren.
Stamp Artist
Synthia Saint James
Growing up in New York and Los Angeles, Synthia Saint James always knew she wanted to be an artist. Self-taught, she developed an artistic style that is uniquely and recognizably her own.
Saint James sold her first painting at age 20 — a commissioned piece for a coworker — which helped launch her artistic career. A professional artist for more than 45 years, she has worked with clients such as Barnes and Noble, Maybelline, UNICEF, Essence magazine, and The Coca-Cola Company, among others. Saint James created the original cover art for Terry McMillan’s novel Waiting to Exhale and has illustrated and/or authored 17 children’s books. Her work has been exhibited internationally and has appeared in several United States embassies around the world.
With bright, bold colors, Saint James’s striking paintings convey the joy and vibrancy of her subjects. Inspired in part by French Impressionists, she focuses on shapes and overall visual effects, using as many as nine coats of paint to get the colors just right.
Saint James lives and works in Los Angeles. She created the art for the first Kwanzaa stamp issued in 1997. Kwanzaa (2016) is her second project for the Postal Service™.