On Holiday Cards and Letter Writing

This time of year, from Thanksgiving to Christmas, is always a busy time of the year for me. For twenty-five years (with breaks for child-bearing and moving from one state to another), I taught at various colleges and universities. These weeks were always busy with grading final essays and business-writing projects, averaging those final grades for reporting, and allaying (or multiplying) students' anxiety. Now I tutor part-time, but I've discovered that just as there is a tendency to fill with material objects the space in which one lives, no matter how large, there is likewise a tendency to fill time with projects and activities. And so these past few weeks I have filled my time with work (28 hours a week) and with various projects.

Although I despise the excesses of the season, I am no holiday Scrooge. I love sending Christmas cards; often these are cards of my own making, sometimes with a bit of poetry included. If the year had been filled with particularly interesting (or sad and tragic) events, the cards would be more elaborate. I like manipulatives, so some of my cards included pop-up collages. A couple of years I designed origami holiday greetings with photo collages and fragments of poetry folded as fortune tellers, or cootie catchers, as they are also known by many generations of school kids.

Years ago I was a prolific letter-writer, but the joy in that activity diminished over time as so few friends kept up the correspondence. And so it is with holiday cards. At one time I received many holiday cards or letters reassuring me that family members and scattered friends were still living and sentient. But as the cards failed to arrive year after year and enough people complained that they had no time to send cards or to write letters, I thought it must be time to end this tradition as well. Why continue to do something that just makes other people feel guilty for not reciprocating?

And so last year, I purchased on sale some pretty, hand-craft styled Christmas cards, thinking that these would be the last cards I would send. Rather than making my own cards, I would crochet some small holiday object: a star or a snowflake for a tree or window, or small old-fashioned doilies in holiday colors to serve as coasters for those wine glasses toasting the season or for the glass of milk or cup of coffee of my alcohol-abstinent friends. These I would include in each card, a parting gift to friends and family. And thus would end my holiday card giving.

"This is the last year I'm sending Christmas cards," I told my daughter, as I filled the cards with hand-crocheted items and addressed the envelopes.

"You said that last year," my daughter replied, unimpressed.

"Did I? I don't remember that."

And so the tradition is likely to continue just because I can't remember from year to year that I've resolved to cease sending holiday cards. So it must be for many traditions: they continue limping along past all real meaning and relevancy because people just can't let go.