It seems that we receive fewer holiday cards in the mail every year. A few friends have swapped paper for email, and others post pictures and well wishes on social media. Still, many have abandoned the practice altogether.
Today’s fast-paced, over-scheduled calendars are a formidable impediment to the quiet, time-consuming task of assembling paper cards.
Yet every November, I force my family into holiday outfits and take our annual photos at the beach. We position our camera in front of the same lifeguard chair each year, then marvel at the changes from past cards. The early photos where we all fit in the frame sitting in the sand, the newer ones where baby blonde hair has faded to brown, and the missing baby teeth mark the bittersweet evanescence of childhood. In none of our holiday photos do our children ever look the same.
This year has been like any other. We took pictures by the beach and marveled at all the changes. Then, I uploaded the best shots and picked a card design. All that’s left is updating my holiday address spreadsheet.
This spreadsheet has lived many lives, its origins dating back to 2007 when we first collected addresses for our wedding. Over the past 17 years, many of the names and streets have changed, and yet, unable to fully give up the past, I have kept every iteration, choosing to rename our file each year instead of just replacing it.
And so, when I open last year’s file, I first rename it. Then, I begin updating. The first few changes are happy. I update the surnames of relatives who’ve gotten married and send texts to those who have moved. I change cards for the new parents, which are now addressed to their families. With every change, I think of each person, remembering the last time we spoke, emailed, or saw each other face-to-face. For many, it has been years since we’ve spent real time together.
Part of our busy, spread-out lives means staying in contact with extended family is challenging. Every year, my heart wishes I could do better than send the occasional card. Every year, I promise to make more phone calls and plan more visits to grandparents and older relatives. And yet, every year, I fall short, once again promising to try harder.
Hopefully, our holiday card can somehow convey these emotions. I continue on my spreadsheet, updating the list with the changes I do not want to make. The deletions.
My grandmother’s name hits the hardest. We lost her this year in March, and it still hasn’t sunk in that I can’t send her a card. She won’t be there to tell me how beautiful the pictures are, how much the kids have changed. My grandmother’s pride for her family was contagious, a blanket she’d toss across the room, its weight so thick it could warm even the deepest recesses of my heart.
I think of how much I miss that now. How much I miss the musical trill of her voice. I pause on her name and let myself miss her for ten minutes before mustering the courage to hit ‘delete.’ Then I pause again, waiting for my breath to slow before continuing.
There are other relatives we’ve lost, and I say goodbye to their names, too. I remember one of my husband’s great uncles from Wisconsin who, every year, would write us a couple of personalized sentences in his card. I only had the pleasure of meeting him at our wedding, and yet every year at Christmas, he’d take the time to wish us a happy holiday and thank us for our card. It’s funny how big of an impact those few short sentences made and how much I will miss receiving them this year.
Yet, it reminds me why I am doing this, sitting at my computer updating a spreadsheet that pays homage to a dying tradition. It’s a way to connect with our loved ones and tie my family to its past while honoring its future.
I keep this in mind as I finish up the list. I remove friends we’ve lost touch with. I keep a few I miss who’ve moved away, and I hope the outreach will help us reconnect in the new year. Then, I add new families who have become acquaintances and friends.
Then I marvel, not at our card, but at the list of friends and family before us. So many of the names are familiar, so many new, so many gone. And yet, somehow, every year, the number of cards I need remains constant, a testament to the ebbs and flows of life. Something about this makes me smile, and I am thankful for the new names – the new babies, spouses, and friends. They are now part of the light propelling us forward, part of the ever-growing list of people we love.
This makes me feel grateful. Grateful for those I get to send cards to this year, grateful for those I loved enough to send cards to in the past, and forever grateful for my children and husband, who humor me every year as I march them to the beach for this both dreaded and revered task.
Because sending these cards is about so much more than just taking another picture. It is an act of love, remembrance, and gratitude. A tradition that reminds me each year of the true meaning of the holiday season, and one I hope to continue for many years to come.
