I love to send out Christmas cards. It’s not hard to get on my list. I think I started years and years ago and just keep adding to the list. This year, after the tree has come down and the presents put away I thought it was time to go through the cards and see who sent them to us in return. You see, you don’t have to send us a card to get one, but if you send us one we are hell-bent to get you one in return.
I’m not a statistician but I do think it’s interesting the number of different cards that we get. We send out roughly 100 cards (at least I try to keep it at 100). This year we got 54 cards. That’s not bad. Out of those 21 had pictures with them. I always like to see what people do with their pictures. I like to put pictures on my cards too. This year I had a picture of Santa kneeling at the manger out at St. Jerome Church. I didn’t take the picture but wish I had. There was a little boy who was stretching as tall as he could so that he could see Santa. Ones like that just want to make you cry. But I got pictures of new babies and babies to come in 2018. I got pictures of families, some of them pretty funny. Some were just snapshots. Some had their fur-babies on them. Lots of them were 3 or 4 pictures throughout the year. I really do like those because people went to a lot of trouble to get those pictures and put them together and order them and send them out. I guess that’s why I like to send cards out with pictures on them.
We got 14 religious cards. That number seems low to me since a lot of the cards we send/receive are to people we either go to church with or used to go to church with. I like the religious ones. Several years ago I heard that if you get a Christmas card with the 3 wise men on it that you should hang that card by your door after the Feast of the Epiphany that the wise men will bring you riches throughout the year. Let me tell you this. For the last few years we have put our cards up at the front and back doors. And we leave them up all year. I usually start laughing at this sometime in August but I’m not going to be the one to take them down. I can use all of the help I can get.
We got cards from businesses and politicians. In fact, one politician sends us two cards every year. I’m not going to name names because we enjoy getting those cards. The problem is though that we have never sent him a card because I don’t want to send it to his office, I want to send it to his home. I guess I could make a phone call and find out here would be the best place to send it. Nah, that sounds like too much trouble.
I am surprised by the rest of the cards that are not imprinted. And some of those have a small note in them. I don’t know how many cards those people send out but they have put some time and effort into those cards. I’m always impressed. I used to send an annual letter to my friends out of town that I don’t see very often. But honestly, with Facebook I keep up with those people pretty well. But there seemed to be so much to tell that it would end up being a couple of pages long. But I do love getting the cards that have a letter with them. I love hearing about others’ lives, especially if I am not connected with them socially.
I do have a couple of concerns this year though. I have a few friends that I normally hear from at this time of the year, and at no other time. I didn’t hear from them this year. It wouldn’t worry me except we’re all getting a little bit older and I hope and pray that they are not sick this year. Some people will never send cards out. That’s fine with me. There was a time a couple of years ago that I quit sending cards to people I didn’t get cards from. I had to dwindle my list down a bit. Jimmy threw a fit. He said it didn’t matter if we didn’t get a card back. I agreed but we had to start cutting back somewhere. Some people on my list were in my life for a very short time and are no longer in my life. I don’t know if they want to get a card from me anymore or not. But I hesitate to take them off of my list. What if mine is only one of a few that they get every year. Everyone needs to get Christmas cards.
Oh, there have been years that I have found Christmas cards on sale and I buy them up. I don’t know why I do that because I’m not going to send those out. But they are usually really funny or have Snoopy on them or something. I usually end up either giving them away or just saving them. This year I send some Grinch Christmas cards to a couple of my customers. I don’t know why but that at least was a purpose for some of those. Rest assured, I have plenty more. And I stayed out of the Hallmark stores after Christmas.
I didn’t want to write this to shame anyone into sending me Christmas cards, and I truly don’t need any more that I need to send to. But I was sitting here, feeling a little nostalgic about this Christmas come and gone and thought I would share it with you.
