An overabundance of religious Christmas stamps from last year coupled with an impending rate hike helped the Postal Service to decide not to print a new design for 2005.

The annual brouhaha over whether it's Christmas or "the holidays" spilled over into the U.S. Postal Service this week, with the Internet and public conversation awash with horror that no new religiously themed stamp was printed for the 2005 season.

Since 1966, the Postal Service has issued a Christmas stamp that includes the Madonna and Christ child, listed as "traditional" stamps, using classic works of art. Last year's reproduced a painting by 15th-century Italian artist Lorenzo Monaco. The religious stamp usually is accompanied by a separate printing of nonreligious Christmas stamps. This year's theme: Christmas cookies.

But patrons looking for a new religiously themed stamp this year are getting leftover Madonna printings from last year, touching off a wave of reports that the Postal Service was planning to discontinue religiously themed Christmas stamps.

"It's absolutely not true," said Diana Svoboda, spokeswoman for the Pittsburgh district. Next year's printing will include a new Madonna and the price stamped over her left shoulder will explain why a new one wasn't printed this year: Rates are going up to 39 cents per letter Jan. 8.

"We had an overabundance of religiously based stamps from last year," she said. The Postal Service needed to sell its overstock of Madonna stamps and didn't want a fresh crop of outdated stamps sitting in the drawers for next year.

This year's cookie stamps were printed because last year's non-religiously themed stamps -- the service tries to keep each kind on hand for patrons -- sold out.

That news came as a relief to the Rev. Elizabeth Murphy, pastor of Haven Heights United Methodist Church in Mount Washington. A confusing encounter at her home post office in Ingomar set off a flurry of e-mails after she informed a fellow pastor that she'd been left with the impression the Madonna stamps had been permanently discontinued.

It happened a week ago when she tried to buy 100 religiously themed stamps. Ministers, she explained, are the last people who would want to fall behind on their Christmas mail.

The clerk blinked when she turned down the Christmas cookie stamps and asked for the religiously themed ones.

"He just indicated he didn't have a clue what I was asking about," she said. "I couldn't even make clear to this young man that I wanted Christian Christmas stamps, and not secular ones. I think that speaks to our time and our culture."

The time being the cyber era, and the culture being skittish, the theory of the vanishing Christmas stamp has taken deep root in the American imagination, alongside complaints about school pageants with new words to "Silent Night," possibly sung under a "unity tree." A story similar to Rev. Murphy's can be found on various Web sites.

One, called "Darleen's Place," carried a vivid account on Nov. 24 in which the author's mother asks for the Madonna stamps, and the clerk pulls out the previous year's issue and tells her, "These are all I have and they'll be the last you ever see."

"Mom asks, 'What do you mean?' He explains the USPS will not be issuing any more 'religious' stamps."

The encounter also has the clerk informing Darleen's mom that he is not permitted to say "Merry Christmas." Darleen did not respond to an e-mail requesting more details.

A similar story turned up on a Web site run by right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin. A reader there reported calling the postal service's public line and being told that religiously themed stamps were being discontinued "to avoid any legal constitutional issues."

This was startling news to Mark Saunders, a postal service spokesman in Washington. He'd just finished mailing a news release that announced the design for next year's Madonna stamp.

It's a painting by 18th-century Peruvian artist Ignacio Chacon and will arrive in the post offices in October.

"We've also got the Eid stamp that's still available. And Hanukkah. Those are religious stamps," Mr. Saunders said. The Eid stamp, which recognizes the two most important Islamic holidays or eids, was issued in 2001 and is still in circulation. This year's Hanukkah stamp is really last year's. It shows a dreidel, a clay top Jewish children play with on the holiday.

Mr. Saunders said the last big Internet rumor about the postal service required a press release. A few years back, an anonymous e-mail circulated announcing that a fictitious congressman had introduced a bill to give the postal service a 5-cent tax on each e-mail.

"It was totally untrue," he said, agreeing that at least it would have given spammers a few heart attacks.