The little things

I sent my cards off today. This is one of those little things (and perhaps a tradition that is dying out in some quarters*). It's one of the little things about Christmas that I like.

It's probably a throwback to my childhood. My parents sent out an enormous number of cards - probably over 100 - and in those days, my mom wrote personal letters in almost every one of them. (She started shortly after Thanksgiving). They got a lot of cards, too - my mom had a lot of cousins, and they still corresponded with people they'd known in grad school, and my dad had some former colleagues from his first job he was still in contact with. The cards would come, several every day, and my parents would open them and read the messages and then put them in a big basket in the living room. (And the following Christmas, my mom would dig out the cards and either give them to my Brownie troop for crafts, or to one of the church day cares for crafts...so the cards didn't totally go to waste. And some years we would cut the pretty scenes out of the fronts of the cards (if there was nothing written on the inside cover) and turned them into gift tags).

So, Christmas cards loomed large in my childhood, and I think it's that ghost of "Sending Christmas cards is something that grown-ups just DO" is part of the reason I still send them.

I don't write long personal notes in most of them, though. (And this year, my cards were too small to write very much). Many of the cards go to people I see or talk to on a regular basis, so I don't really feel I need to write a lot in them. The few cards that go to more-distant relatives or a couple far away friends I do write a short letter in, if I've not been much in contact with the person over the past few months.

Also, this year, one of the groups I'm in on Ravelry is doing a card exchange - where people who sign up get five names to send to, and in return, they get five cards (not necessarily from the same people, but one of my five was one of the people I got a card from). It was a lot of fun because you didn't know from whom you were getting cards, or where they were coming from. (One of my cards came from Australia - and a very nice card it was, too, the cover was a painting of a wreath that incorporated native flowers and birds of Australia.)

People I send cards to don't always send cards back but that's fine. I don't care if people don't send out cards, and I don't want anyone to feel obligated to send me one just because I sent one.

I also send a few cards out to people (people I know through church and stuff) who are partially or totally shut-in. My feeling is, even with me being able to get out and get around and do stuff, I know it's a very welcome thing to come home and find something in my mail box that is not a bill or junk mail, so it must be extra nice for someone who's stuck at home a lot of the time to get "real" mail.

My list has changed in size over the years...I think this year I sent out about 40 cards, but most of them were to people I know from church (members of my Sunday school class and such). I've lost a few people over the years (a few relatives have died, a few older friends moved and we lost track of each others' addresses) and added some over the years (new friends, cousins who moved out on their own).

It just feels like a Christmas thing to me, to send out cards. So I will continue to do it as long as I can afford to every semester, and as long as no one explicitly tells me NOT to send them a card.

(*I know all the arguments against it: "It takes a lot of time." "It's expensive to mail stuff any more." "It's wasteful - all those trees for something people will look at and then throw away." I kind of say "bah" to most of those arguments (and buy recycled-paper cards when I can find good ones)