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I love Christmas – not so much as it extends into November, even October; but when Advent starts, I’m all about it.
Our tree is up, glowing, and there are lights in the front garden too – delicious, of course. The house is filled with ubiquitous festive tunes (“A Spaceman came Traveling” by Chris de Burgh is my favorite), and I can even join in elf on the shelf nonsense.
All in all, the slow build-up to the big day is going well. A single fly (probably a myrrh) arrived through the letterbox on Friday, when along with takeaway menus, clothing catalogs and a phone bill came a load of Christmas cards – our first of the season.
Although this is going to sound cheesy, my heart sank a little.
Last year I almost made the decision to stop sending Christmas cards. There was mild environmental guilt, anger over the price of stamps, and simply a lack of time. But then I thought I should at least send some to my aunts and cousins; and when a couple arrived from old friends, I thought I’d better reciprocate.
Inevitably, one or two turned up when it was too late to send any more, and on Christmas Eve I sent some wrong messages to those I hadn’t managed to write to. Everything seemed like a slap in the face.
When I was a child, my mother started writing her Christmas letters at the end of November, just to make sure she had enough time to get through them all. In those pre-internet days, seasonal messages were a big deal. She would handwrite at least twenty-five rather long letters, informing relatives and distant friends of the happenings of the past year. Each would then be folded into a card and placed in a box at the end of our journey, decorated with a holiday stamp.
My job would be to do the setup, and I felt a keen sense of responsibility. Without those letters, what would our third cousins know about their relatives? How would they manage without news of my progress at school or our summer vacation in Austria?
Frankly, if we received similar letters from those same third cousins, I would read them with interest. Updates from friends who used to live in our village felt like strange visits from people I barely remembered. Even as the personalized letters began to be replaced by circular, typed summaries of recent family history, I poured them over.
The world has changed now. email, Facebook and WhatsApp make it nearly impossible to be unaware of what your friends and family are up to. In fact, we probably know too much. Even my mother stopped writing real Christmas letters a long time ago, although she still tends to put a few sentences in her cards.
For most people, however, it’s just a simple ‘Dear So and So, Merry Christmas, love from us.’ The card represents the recognition of a weakly lasting affection, but it’s also obviously exhausting.
This year, like last year, I was at a loss as to what to do. I was wondering about sending email, but how magical is it? And most of us get too many emails anyway. The e-card is a bit inconvenient and you can’t replace it Christmas card with one line on WhatsApp. I could make a festive TikTok video for the world – but I’m forty-five years old.
When those cards arrived on Friday, I first left them on the kitchen table, looking at them with a mixture of irritation and joy. When my wife and I finally opened them in the evening, we discovered that one was from my former roommate who we really should have seen more of. The second was from my aunt, who recently moved to a new home. And the third was from my wife’s best friend, who has been living abroad for years. Each one was a little reminder of the love we feel for these peopleand the love they feel for us.
I realized it was game over. I might resent the cost of postage and be frustrated when I can’t find the address of a relative I’m sure has moved, but the truth is, I’d resent not hearing from those old friends and relatives I rarely get to talk to in person even more. I if you don’t give, you won’t receive.
So now I have a box of thirty cards ready. Although they won’t be followed by a long letter, I will mean every word when I write: ‘Merry Christmas! love will