Remember Christmas Seals?

To fight lung disease? Almost all of the cards sent to my parents when I was a kid had a Christmas seal on the back of the envelope. I haven't seen a Christmas seal for decades.

• We would get prizes for selling them. I think.

• Maybe they were all clubbed?

• They are now collectibles

• Change to Easter Seals - still going strong.

  http://www.easterseals.com/site/PageServer

• One of my jobs as a kid was to affix a Christmas Seal stamp next to the regular stamp on the Christmas cards envelopes. It never occurred to anyone to maybe use a damp sponge to get the stamps wet, so I licked every one of them with my ample tongue (I can touch my nose with the tip of my tongue.) All that wet licking practice came in handy in later years. Easter had Seal too.

• I don't believe they have Easter seals selling campaigns in schools anymore, R4.

• Because it's mixing religion and government! Keep the seals out of the schools!

• Were Christmas seals sold by school kids and provided by schools? I went to catholic school and we had to sell religious Christmas cards, so I don't know what public schools did.

• Did the seal go next to the stamp or on the back of the envelope flap?

• We always put the seal on the back of the envelope, sealing the back. My mother decreed only postal stamps were allowed on the front. Is there much left of the sanitorium in upstate NY?

• Sanitoriums thought that "fresh air" was needed for tuberculosis patients. It wasn't, but the outdoor sunlight was good at killing the bacteria on their clothing, etc. It must have cost a hell of a lot of money to send someone to a sanitorium. There was no health insurance in those days.

• I wou'dn't say "still going strong," R4. I had thought they had disappeared until your mention. They were known everywhere when I was a kid