Ahhhh...Christmas cards.
Love 'em? Hate 'em? Think they're a thing of the past?
Personally, I love them: I love the family updates. I love the pictures. I love them arriving in the mail; a fun surprise amidst the bills and flyers. I love their numbers starting to build across the mantel. At first just one from a local museum or a friend's business...then a couple of early-bird friends...then an onslaught of family update letters.
My very favorite are the right-at-Christmas, and even well-past-Christmas stragglers. (Maybe I have a soft spot for these because we've so often been on this schedule.)
But, really, I always feel like I savor those best. The others I take a cursory glance at and don't really sit down to look through and enjoy them until after the holiday hubbub is over. When we start dismantling (dis-mantel-ing?) the mantel, I'll usually get a cup of tea and sit on the couch under a blanket mulling over a pile of updates from friends near and far.
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The biggest struggle for me has always been keeping the list of recipients up to day. Every year I try to perfect my address list-keeping system. At this point I have a Word document where I keep 'The List'.
I try to keep it minimal. Mostly people who are actually in our lives. Though there are certain folks who we just like so much that we don't have the heart to take them off. Though we may truly never see them again we somehow feel a kinship and like to keep up this tenuous bond.
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I carefully put new addresses in with the list-we-now-know-is-all-wrong, and after the holidays carefully update all the information we've culled through the season, I'll print out a new copy and put it in a little bin with leftover cards and stamps and Christmas return labels...in the hopes that next year it will all be simple.
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If, during the year, we get a 'We've Moved!' card from someone, I'll change it on my phone and be sure to put that in with 'The List'.
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This year I had such high hopes that there wouldn't be very many changes.
Off the top of my head I knew at least one card recipient had gotten divorced. We got his new address, and changed the name on his old address to reflect his ex-wife's name, rather than addressing a card to them as a couple.
Someone else got married, so we needed to change their information.
I thought that was about it.
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But as I started skimming down the list, I had to beg Michael for help. He read down the marked out, scribbled through, added to, old list and I made sure the copy on the computer was right again.
We must have changed addresses, names, or completely removed at least a dozen entries. Several more we just left the address blank because we know they've moved. We'll keep a card ready for them when we get their card this year.
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The sad side of the holiday is all the ways it will never be like it was last year, and the year before that...
We came to multiple names of friends who are no longer with us.
We talked some about Christmases past, and the fun memories we've had with these people we loved so much, and about how sad and weird it is we won't have them with us in the future.
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There were people we added too. New family and friends who will make memories into the future.
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I guess the only way next year is likely to be like this one is that when I get out the Christmas card list...it will all need updating once again.
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"Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like."
-Lao Tzu
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"A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together."
-Garrison Keillor
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"You can't stop the future You can't rewind the past The only way to learn the secret ...is to press play."
-Jay Asher
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| Not my image, found it on Pinterest, not sure who to give credit to...but I wish I'd said this. |
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