Holiday Cards

Cath and I are among the diminishing number of people who send out Christmas/Holiday cards. In our busy digital world, fewer people send them, and among the younger generations, it is almost nonexistent. That is just life today. Me? I still enjoy the annual “old fashioned” event of exchanging Holiday cards.

Sending Christmas cards is something we have enjoyed since we were first married. We lived in Germany then, and as a result rarely saw family or old friends at all, let alone over the holidays. Due to deployments, from 1980 to 1989, we were only home twice for Christmas. Christmas cards became a way of sharing the season with family and friends. 

 Some time in the ‘80s, after we bought a computer, we started writing “Holiday Letters” to include with our card. You know what I mean – the ones that update everyone on what has gone on in your lives for the past year. I know others continue writing those, but we stopped in the early 2000s. With email, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media, it seems most folk already know what is going on in other friends’ lives. 

 After moving to the country in ‘99, we migrated from store-bought cards to making our own from a photo of some winter scene here at the farm. For the last several years, we have also posted one of the cards on social media, sending greetings to our friends there as well. 

 I understand why fewer people send them now. We are all busy these days, and are all digitally connected. It is easy to drop a Christmas or Holiday greeting on Facebook or Instagram, or create a timely TikTok video to share holiday greetings, or holiday snark, depending on who you are. Maybe Holiday cards have become a bit too quaint for today’s world. 

 For me, it is just the opposite. As the world becomes faster and more digital, I continue to enjoy the entirety of the analog process of sending Holiday greetings.

 It starts when I select the photo for the card. I review my iPhone photos from the previous winter, looking for something unique, or different. Sometimes, it is one picture, sometimes a couple of them. I then work online with McClanahan Camera, a local Warrenton camera shop. They do digital printing for all kinds of occasions. After selecting the design and printing the cards, the most fun task starts – writing the short message on each card for a friend or family member. I enjoy the minute or two spent on each – thinking of the person or family and how we know them, and about the good times we have spent with them in the past. We finally address all the envelopes and in the mail they go. We try to finish them by mid December, so they arrive a few days before Christmas itself, joining the crescendo of activities leading to the big day.

 I also look forward to the cards we receive. Some are from old friends we have known for ever. Others are from family members. A few come from Army friends we haven’t seen since stationed together in the ‘80s or early ‘90s. Sometimes there is a photo or letter with the card. We save the cards in a basket that sits by the fireplace. Occasionally, I pull them out and reread them, thinking about our friends and family. As December approaches the next year, we remove the old cards and start refilling the basket with the new arrivals.

These days, we don’t receive as many as before, but that is OK too. I also look forward to seeing greetings of joy and good wishes on social media. All help me remember the blessings in our life.

This year, the process is well under way. The cards are printed and we have written the messages on them. They will go in the mail in the next few days. I hope those receiving the cards enjoy them as much as we did in sending them. And for our online friends, we will post our card on Christmas Eve.

Enjoy this holiday season whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, the Winter Solstice, or New Years. And even if not sending cards, I hope you slow down and spend some time in the analog world. I am going to try and follow my own advice as well.

(Author’s note: my wife Cathy is doubtful of my ability to take my own advice about spending more time in the analog world.)