Pile ‘O Cards

I have finished stuffing, licking, addressing, and stamping the Christmas cards.

 

This is my personal equivalent to running a triathlon.  I know not everyone would consider preparing and mailing Christmas cards a high impact sport, but, hey, we’ve all got to have a claim to fame.

 

I’ve had the cards waiting for several weeks but the Christmas letter was giving me trouble. There are two reasons for this:

 

1. Now that I write over here every day I have problems writing anything new and exciting in the Christmas letter. I’ve also discovered I have this problem in every day conversations. I start to tell a story and my listener tells me they already read about the incident on the blog. I really need to work on getting more interesting.

2. Now that Uno can read I have to be very careful about what I write. She’ll tell the others what I say about them. This stage is much worse than when they would monitor and rummage through the trash cans for those miscellaneous treasures they didn’t even know were around until they made it into the can. This newly acquired reading expertise makes it like I’m living with a pack of peanut-sized informants (some of whom don’t even speak English).

I did manage to write the note and have now successfully folded and stuffed the note.

 

Each of the Christmas card activities is a puzzle piece adding up to the major whole, and contributes to my belief Christmas cards are tiny gifts of love to each recipient.

 

I can’t help it, I love the Christmas card!

 

Despite the stress of getting the photos taken, choosing the right patterns, deciding if you want to say, “Merry Christmas,” “Happy Holidays,” Seasons Greetings,” of side step any possible religious affiliation conflicts with a simple “Happy New Year!” the Christmas card is one of my favorite time capsules!

 

I treasure each card we receive. One year we put the cards in a box at the kitchen table and we pulled out a card and prayed for the family each week. Another year I put the cards in a photo album. Last year we decorated a whole wall of the kitchen with all the cards – we’re planning to do that again this year.

 

I dream that maybe someday I’ll send all the Christmas cards from past years back to the original owners so they can take a little walk down memory lane…

 

I know that Christmas cards only give us a snapshot of life, a glimpse of happy people doing fun things… but they’re wonderful. I know the vision they present may not be completely accurate, but it’s still beautiful!

 

So, feel free to send me your Christmas card… I’ll devour it with joy, like the little gift of community that it is!

 

And me, I’ll be over here wondering if I’m about to die of glue poisoning from licking all those envelopes. If you hear from me tomorrow, you’ll know I made it.