another tradition maintained

 I wrote out my cards (well, the ones for non-relatives, non-in-town people*) tonight. If you e-mailed and asked for a card, hopefully it is coming soon. If we regularly exchange cards, you will be getting one. I also did my "Bunny Staplus" (a made-up non-religious holiday that CPAAG uses, so that everyone and anyone can join in) cards done - one has to go to Switzerland so I will need to go to the post office

I think I'll take these to the post office (tomorrow, if I can grab a few minutes to). Since I have one international one yet to send, I need to go there any way. They might go out faster (and more surely) if I hand them in at the window.

(*oh, and I still have to do them for a couple family friends as well)

I like doing this. I don't know, I may be one of the last generations to have the experience of parents who sent LOTS of cards. Some years I think it was close to 100, or at least it seemed like that - there were relatives (lots of aunts and uncles; cousins about my mom's age, grandparents - nearly all of them gone now). Others were old friends (my mom still sent cards to friends from her girlhood; they still sent cards to college roommates). Or former acquaintances from my dad's first position in West Virginia, and then later, to people we knew from Akron. I've mentioned before that a few years my mom hired me to type out the addresses so they were more legible, and then apply the return address labels and stamps (in those days, the gummed kind you had to lick or wet - I had a little sponge in a bowl I used to dampen them)

I liked the idea of it. Which is why I still do this. In those days, of course, there was no e-mail and no texting and no social media, and phone calls were expensive (and if the person wasn't home, or was on the phone, you had to try again later). The Christmas card was a way of "well you're not close by and we can't really get together but I still want to keep our acquaintance up"

My mom usually wrote personal notes in each one (In later years, they did go to a brief Christmas letter, which she personalized for people we were closer to. And yes, my parents rolled their eyes over the 2 to 3 page long closely-spaced letter of brags, or the ones that were just photo spreads of all the ritzy places people had been). I don't do much other than work, and I don't have kids that do things, so I usually just write a greeting in them and put some stickers inside the card and call it good. It's the thought that counts, anyway, and it does seem tacky to think less of a person because they don't give you a 50 point review of their life in the past year. 

For most people, I get fairly standard boxed cards with a nice picture and sentiment on it. For a few people I get funny or cheeky cards, and for "special" people (like the family friends) I might get a fancier card. 

I've gotten a few cards so far. Many of them are actually "thank yous" from places like the Regional Food Bank where I donate money. Some day I want to string up something so I can hang them over the string and display them; I just never seem to get around to it but I like that idea, of the string looped from hooks and the cards hung over it; it seems "homely" in the good (British) sense of the word - sort of comfortable if a slightly humble way of decorating. (In my family, my parents usually put them in a large basket on the coffee table.)

I know some people complain that it's "wasteful" (and I suppose arguably it is, but given the avalanche of junk mail a lot of us seem to get, a few cards don't seem like a waste, and they are nice and they are pleasant and you CAN recycle some of them, or even cut off the fronts and re use them). And it is expensive as postage goes up. But I don't do a lot for entertainment that costs money, and it makes me happy to send them, so I do.

I will say it makes me a little sad how my list shrinks a little every year - last year, I didn't send to Jo, because she had passed on. And some of the relatives I used to send to are no longer with us. I have gained a few people - mostly Internet Friends, who still count as friends in my book.