Holiday Greetings: a Time to Reminisce
The holidays are a time to connect and reconnect, sometimes the only time we do so with some of our family, friends and acquaintances. We wish our reach-outs could be more frequent, but time speeds by in our fast-paced millenial society.
The holidays are particularly busy, and anything helps to streamline the preparations at hand. Think about how the Christmas card has evolved…from the boxed-card-and-family-newsletter to an electronic greeting sent via Facebook. The time saved and the number of people reached with the latter are tremendous. We can reach out to everyone in a fraction of the time.
In the past I used to grumble that we couldn’t figure out how to print address labels for our Christmas greetings; my complaints were as much a holiday tradition as hanging the stockings and untwisting the twinkly lights. Addressing envelopes by hand took so much more time than adhering labels, time I just didn’t have as Christmas Captain, director of all things holiday. But if we were going to participate in the time-honored ritual of sending our best to loved ones near and far, I had no choice but to take pen in hand and start writing out addresses, the old-fashioned way.
In reality, I love the feel of a weighty pen in my hand, ink smoothly trailing on heavy paper, and I enjoy the chance to practice my penmanship instead of pounding a keyboard. I’ve come to embrace the tradition of card-exchanging with a nod to good old-fashioned handwriting. Our family no longer types out a letter to update our loved ones; my husband tells our story in photographs reprinted dozens of times by a far-flung commercial printer. To balance the use of technology, I handwrite the envelopes.
Each careful stroke of the pen is accompanied by a swell of memories. As I address envelopes, I get to relive times spent with friends from college and past work colleagues and with family rarely seen. It takes only a minute to transcribe an address to an envelope, but a montage of memories accompanies each name, P.O. Box and city/state/zip. Something funny said. A meal shared. A childhood adventure. I’ve come to treasure the walk down memory lane.
This year my daughter sat with me to put stamps on the carefully handwritten, stuffed envelopes. Her work was punctuated with Who’s this? and I don’t know that person and We know somebody in Australia? as she read the names of addressees to herself. She helped me relive, a second time, a flood of memories and good times with the people we love. Someday she will sit with her daughter, feisty and inquisitive like her, in my spot at the Christmas greeting table, playing back memories recent and distant.
Hopefully this time together will be one of them.
