What are you writing in your Christmas card?
Every year I plan to start my Christmas cards in November but every year I find myself in the second week of December having a panic that the last posting day for Christmas is fast rushing up on me and I still haven’t even picked up a pen. Cards from my more efficient friends are already landing on the doormat and stressing me out that I might not get my holiday greetings out in time.
Part of the ongoing delay has been that we’ve been trying to get our Christmas newsletter together. In the past, I used to write little notes in the inside flap of the yearly cards that I send out but as my contact list got longer and my spare time got shorter, it became a painful chore (literally, for my aching right hand) to write out my snippets of news 70 or more times. So a few years ago, we started a printed newsletter which we would include in the mailing.
I’m still a little ambivalent about doing our Christmas newsletter. I know that some people think that such an annual newsletter is “naff” or “too American” (ie too cheesy). On my part, I know that I enjoy reading my friends news whether they send it in the form of a newsletter or scribbled on the side of their Christmas cards. In particular, if we have not been in touch for a while, it’s nice to know what they’ve been up to. I find it rather disappointing to rip open those Christmas cards from friends I haven’t heard from in some time to find only their scribbled signatures — it’s nice to know that they have included us in their holiday greetings list but: What’s excited them this year? What’s made them laugh? What’s saddened them? What have they had to celebrate or be proud of? Isn’t that what friendship is about — sharing the good news and bad, the mundane and the extraordinary?
So, in spite of the extra time and effort that it takes to put together the newsletter, adding photos and writing up our news as well as making it pretty to the eye and easy to read, every year we spend one weekend in early December sweating it out to produce this annual roundup of the past year. When we have wrapped it up and the PDF is ready to print, the marathon is not over yet as we still have to sit down at the dining table and write out the individual Christmas cards themselves. (Unfortunately, I think we have missed the mailing for overseas cards so for our friends and family who live outside the UK, we are sending the PDF by e-mail with a digitally designed Christmas greeting.) It’s all worth it, I hope.
It gives me comfort that ours is not the only household that has been scribbling cards frantically these first few weekends in December. I have the image of thousands, if not millions, of people all over England rushing around doing their cards and on top of that buying Christmas presents and wrapping them and putting up their festive lights and decorations around the house.
For those of you who celebrate Christmas, have you sent out your cards yet? Do you include snippets of news in your Christmas mailing? Do you still do it the old-fashioned way with physical cards or do you send e-mail greetings?
Photo: thanks to krisdecurtis from flickr.com (CCL)
- Posted on
Wed, December 17th, 2008 - Author
Yang-May Ooi - Category
- 6 responses
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December 18th, 2008 at 4:21 am
Hey Yang-May.
Great entry (as usual) on Xmas-card writing.
In the good ole’ days, when I had lots of time and not much sense, I used to send a TON(NE) of Christmas cards. For many years (i.e. about 10), I included a unique Xmas tree decoration handcrafted by yours truly – my Mom still has the entire collection, which we will hang on this year’s tree tomorrow.
The full set includes a flying banana (or yellow bird, depending on how you view it), a white felt star, a red velvet heart, a snowman, a candy cane and more (pics to follow lol). The deccies are all made of fabric, and were thus stuff-able into regular envelopes along with the long and newsy Xmas letter over which I, like you, laboured for at least a weekend if not more each year.
While those letters were a pain to write (much like the letters home which I wrote from Abu Dhabi (http://www.amazingwomenrock.com/letters-from-abu-dhabi/index.html), when I first moved there as described in my guest blog of… (hmmm, perhaps you will fill in the blank…), they are a joy to receive, and that’s why I kept writing them (you know, do unto others and all that…).
ANYWAY, by far the all-time Queen of Christmas Letters is my friend Diana, Head Fish at Ottawa-based Piranha Communications (http://www.piranha.net/index.html), to whom I should have introduced you long before now. (Diana meet Yang-May, Yang-May meet Diana)
Diana is a stunningly good writer with a collection of rubber stamps the likes of which no one in this solar system has yet matched. She writes and speaks as well in French as she does in English, and has an amazing circle of interesting friends around the world from whom she gathers (and to whom she regularly re-circulates), a diversity of eclectic jokes, informational tidbits and pieces of social commentary. I hope you two consider connecting.
As for my Christmas letter this year, Mom and I are doing a video, which I intend to post you know where: http://www.amazingwomenrock.com/ - if I finish it before the 25th lol. If I do, I’ll send you the link.
If not, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, your loved ones, and all your subscribers and readers.
And if you don’t complete your Xmas letter in time to meet this year’s post deadline (or is it past already!?), don’t worry…
You can always edit it slightly and be ready for next year, because, as you well know, some things never change.
XOX Susan
December 18th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Some old friends for many years past and computer-savvy still insist on sending season’s greetings the old-fashioned way even though I respond electronically invariably.
If somebody takes the trouble and small expense to do the paperwork in sending
greetings, it would seem to indicate they think that little bit more of you in my belief but it is a practice on the wane, I’m afraid, AND as to the sending of season’s greetings itself or in the first place.
*Inherent characteristics?
BTW I’ve always thought the Chinese are not a particularly sentimental lot in the matter of sending greeting cards and as to showings of physical affection between parent and child, a young guy from Singapore who came to study at Oxford was heard to complain his mother never ever gave him so much as a hug since he was old enough to remember anything.
December 18th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
I’m quite the opposite, actually. I’ve never ever really had the habit of sending cards all my life. What this does remind me of though, is how I used to write letters to my friend by pen… seems a lifetime ago. This…. this makes me wanna write again. Hand-written letters. :)
December 19th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Susan - I love the idea of your flying banana that might be a bird…! Looking forward to catching your Xmas video, too.
Yeeton - You’re right, there’s something extra special these days when someone takes the time and expense to write send physical missive through the post. As for the young Singaporean - while I understand the cultural background to the story, I feel so sad for him.
Kenny - Back in the olden days (1980s) when I used to receive hand written letters from the then great love of my life, there was something lovely about having their handwriting there to hold and also a physical piece of paper that they had also held in their hands. I still think that love letters need to be hand written even in todays technological age for that reason - a love SMS message is just not the same…!
December 20th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
I think it could be a matter availability. In the days of yore, penning letters was the only way (short of sending telegrams) to keep distant hearts connected. We still have boxes of letters that we wrote to each other during courtship, and are pleasantly surprised by the flow of phrases that exuded the pages. Now we will be hard-pressed to repeat the encore, so to speak.
With the advent of the digital age, emails and electronic cards became available, for free. So that’s another logical progression of the means of expressing gratitude and sending congratulatory/greeting messages among friends. Now my wife is the only one keeping the hand-written cards on stream somewhat. And I can always tag my name along.
January 5th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Say Lee - it’s so lovely that you and your wife still have your old love letters and that you read over them together!