With Labor Day and the unofficial end of summer just past, is it too early to begin thinking about the holidays? For many, Thanksgiving and the Thanksgiving parades that usually end with the arrival of Santa Claus are the unofficial start of the Christmas season.

The U.S. Postal Service got the jump on the holidays this week with the introduction of a strip of 44-cent stamps celebrating Thanksgiving Day parades.

While the name “Macy’s” appears nowhere on the stamps, for obvious reasons, they obviously were inspired by the grandest of all Thanksgiving parades, the Macy’s parade in Manhattan. Indeed, the first-day ceremony of the stamps was held yesterday at Macy’s in Herald Square, where the parade ends.

Painted by Paul Rogers of Pasadena, Calif., scene of another fabulous annual parade, and designed by Howard E. Paine of Delaplane, Va., the four stamps are as colorful as the parades they depict. In a strip of four interlocking designs, they show a marching band led by a strutting drum major, balloons that are the trademark of the Macy’s parade, a cowboy spinning a lasso and spectators watching from the sidewalk.

The stamps are being issued in self-adhesive panes of 20. Forty million were printed. For more information, go to usps.com or call (800) 782-6724.