My husband cannot understand what the deal is with Christmas cards.  Every year he sees me hunched over grumbling and asks why I bother.  I bother because ours is a “busy” world where handwritten cards of any sort are a rarity, and even birthday cards can barely be purchased and signed.  But at Christmas cards fly through the post harkening back to another era.  There are the braggy ones, the store-bought ones, the “look at my 10,000 family members” ones, or (like me for years) the “look at my animals” ones, but they are paper tokens that signify someone remembered you nonetheless.  My mother was big on cards.  Even in her last years I took her to the Hallmark store to buy her Christmas cards.  She always bought cardinal ones; they were her favorite bird and I can never see them without thinking of her and her beautiful red hair.  We would pass her cards around Autumn Leaves and she gave them to everyone — from the nurses to the grouch.  What a joy it was to watch.  It was humbling, as it was the only card many ever received.  It showed they were thought of and not just old and forgotten.  Today I came across her last card simply signed, “Love Mama” and it was painfully bittersweet.  To see something she wrote is so precious to me, particularly as she got very self-conscious about her handwriting.  And now when I can no longer see her tiny, freckled hands and I am struggling to get through the second Christmas without her, miraculously she went and did what she always did … she sent me a card.

“Somehow not only for Christmas but all the long year through, the joy that you give to others is the joy that comes back to you.  And the more you spend in blessing the poor and lonely and sad, the more of your heart’s possessing returns to make you glad.” ~ American Fireside Poet John Greenleaf Whittier