• Every year many people like to send out Christmas cards to all their “loved ones”. Mostly, it is a waste of time and money. While very few actually save Christmas greetings, most just throw them away in the same garbage as the numerous boxes and plastic bags full of rumpled and ripped wrapping paper outside of everyone’s house, which seem to compile down many streets on December twenty fifth. Of course, some try to make it special by making a card that is half a picture and the other half with a wishful line such as, “Happy Holidays from the Johnsons!” There they are dressed in the clothes they bought especially for the picture, only later to box is up with the rest of the junk they didn’t want for Christmas. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll use it for a special occasion, but most likely not.

    The people sending cards flip through their phone books once a year, writing every address on envelope after envelope. Topping it off with the cute holiday stamps and, oh yes, let’s not forget the stickers on the top left corner with the mistletoe and address printed in pretty white font. These people they write down, they barely even remember. But every year the pages become more full from all the new people they have encountered that year. It’s inevitable that they will need another box of eighteen cards with a snowman on top grinning through his cola teeth, or maybe the ones with the nativity scene or the three wise men with the faithful Bible verse inside that always explains the “reason for the season”. Then there are the traditional letters; three pages long in every card with the wreaths and presents on the special borders or printer paper. “Dear friends and family, we’ve been so blessed this year…” and on it goes to give details on the struggles they have over come and that little Susan made honor roll or the lead in the school play that year.

    Every year the tradition continues, the post office swarmed with envelopes which half will be partly read and tossed aside unappreciated. Thankfully there are those people who send only a few cards to their closest friends. They put in a greeting that is actually significant or an inside joke instead of an impersonal letter that they’ve printed off eighty-two times just to fill in on the parts they had missed that year. Obviously they communicate enough to know what’s going on in their close friends or families’ lives. So here we are, the season for love and comfort and we’re sending letters to people who we ask to ourselves, “Now who is this again?” But we shrug to ourselves and put in a card anyway just in case, not knowing that it is just the girl who we bought Girl Scout Cookies from that last spring. In this extension of Christmas cheer, this is my gift to you.