Christmas cards on a snowy day

What could be better? I opened 11 Christmas cards and it's snowing outside! I love them all, but really enjoy the notes and letters. It's a big project--opening, cutting off labels, taping them inside the card, and cutting off the cancelled stamps hoping I'll find someone who wants them.

The stamp bonanza was on an envelope from a non-profit. Someone must have sent their donation in stamps. 

1993 .29 Hank Williams; 

2016 .05 grapes, 

2022 .04 blueberries; 

2 1987 .10 Red Cloud ; 

2 1957 .03 stamps of NEA honoring teachers  

2 1957 .03 stamps of 200th anniversary of LaFayette; 

1985 .22 Special Olympics; 

1988 .25 Carousel horse (Cedar Point, OH). 

I remember when 3 cents was the first class postage rate.

 
Rather than wait in a line that went to the door at the only USPS branch around here, today I purchased my stamps at the machine. First time.

Out of practice

 I'm serving Christmas dinner tonight--Christmas Eve.  Then tomorrow we'll have left overs.  That works out well because Christmas is on Sunday this year, and our church will have a 10 a.m. service.  It's not hard to throw a few sandwiches and left-overs on a paper Christmas plate if you don't get home until 11:30.

However, I'm more than a bit out of practice.  I made the potato salad yesterday and cut up some of the fruit. So this morning I've been making sweet potatoes with brown sugar glaze, mixing up the onions, red peppers, mushrooms and bacon for the green beans that are steaming, putting the rest of the fruit together, and getting the ham ready to go in the oven about 4 p.m. But the messiest thing was the scalloped corn.  I don't make it often because Bob hates, loathes, despises corn.  I need a few guests if there is even the smell of corn. But after 62 years of cooking, I've made it many times. You should have seen the kitchen!  I must have used every pan and bowl I owned, and checked the computer 5 times (couldn't find my old recipe if I even had one).  I even pulled out my Mom's red Hall's mixing bowl looking for her magic to be sure it would come together.

Yesterday I opened a can of worms, or at least a box of pictures and letters, and they were spread all over my office floor.  We decided we needed to put all our home made Christmas cards into one album.  I found an empty album, but Bob found a better one, so today he inserted all the cards we could find, beginning with 1985.  I think there are 29 in the album.  When we lived on Abington, he made silk screened cards a few years, but they are the wrong size for this album.  My college roommate Dora, who is a profession artist, made lovely cards, and we have them arranged in a frame as a piece of art. dora hsiung - fiber artist - fiber art

Christmas cards—a nice tradition

For the last two years I haven't added a newsy letter to Bob's Christmas card--a watercolor with a greeting. Our lives changed forever on Oct. 1, 2019, so there is not much to write about for Christmas 2019 and 2020.   And the cards we've been receiving mostly say something like, "stay well," "stay safe," stay safe and well," Hope you staying safe," or "Hope we can see each other soon." A very different holiday, but we certainly look forward to hearing from friends and relatives. This year we’ve received some phone calls in place of cards—don’t recall that from years past.  Maybe 5 or 6.

And one said, “From the Left coast” and he reads my blog!

This is an earlier version of his card, but he added more snow and a Christmas tree when it became this year’s “winner.”  I didn't take a photo of the finished product.

Her cards took a detour

When the mail arrived today I looked through it and pulled out a Christmas catalog to throw away.  But it felt a little thick, so I opened it, and inside were two cards addressed in red to two families in Pennsylvania, from a family in Aspinwall, Pennsylvania, a borough in the Pittsburgh metro area with  hockey player forever stamps not cancelled.  So I figured that somehow those cards got pushed inside a catalog addressed to us along the way from Pittsburgh.  There was a return address so I sat down and wrote a note to the sender telling her that her cards had made a detour to Columbus, Ohio and I was sending them on their way.  While checking this out on the internet I learned that the woman’s father had died earlier this year of ALS, so I also included my condolences.

Anti-Christmas bias isn't new

 In 1993, I was still 6 years away from voting for a Democrat for president, but I could certainly sniff out bias. Came across this letter of Dec. 1993 I had written to the American Library Association which had designed cards for libraries to send to other libraries and their staff.

Dear Colleagues,

Our Library received the very clever and attractive "Season's Readings" card from our sibling library, John A. Prior Health Sciences Library.

We are in complete agreement with your goal of supporting a campaign to promote libraries, reading and literacy through the sale of these cards. However, we are somewhat puzzled and curious that in your effort to include everyone else's language and holiday, you left out English speaking Christians. We Christians (a faith claimed by 1,783,660,000) also have a December holiday. In our language (spoken by 750 million others) it is called CHRISTMAS, and the traditional greeting is, "Merry Christmas."

Perhaps next year we could be included in the festivities.

Signed by me and the library supervisor, Daniel Martin

Sorting Christmas cards at Easter

 

Since we were having Easter dinner here in two days, I thought it might be time to put away the Christmas cards. I take one last look, keep the letters and photos (which after 55 years is now a huge box for my kids to go through when I graduate to the next phase) and toss the rest.

Three things I have to pass on to you.

1) NEVER send cards with sparkles! My goodness. What a mess. My couch and jeans were covered.

2) Please, always write your last name!!! By the time I sort and throw the cards out, the envelopes are long gone and I get confused by all the Nancys, Jims, and Johns.

3) Third, I was rereading a handwritten note from my cousin Sharon and since she is (I assume) a U.S. citizen but has lived in Canada since her marriage 55+ years ago to Angus, she is paying attention to our election, but is seeing Canadian news sources. She writes: “Only Cruz and Trump use the words radical Muslims. I just heard Islam may not qualify as a religion under the Constitution. It only contains 15% religion and the rest is political ideology, which could take you anywhere even violence, depending on who is running the service even having you pledge allegiance to them. Maybe there is something going on here.” I had heard something similar—that it is a cultural ideology not a religion.I know this doesn’t sound like a Christmas greeting, but she also included her travels, health report and weather for Toronto. And it is all handwritten!

Then going through the cards I found notes I hadn't responded to, so I phoned Ann, a local call, who had scribbled something about genealogy that really puzzled me, but she was referring to a chapter in a book from 2003 that I had contributed. Stories of Ohio; tales my grandparents told me, by Dorothy Briss.

I had a note from my college roommate, Dora, and attempted to e-mail her but it bounced, and I looked her up on Google and phoned her in Boston. We had a great chat. Among the cards were some that had been returned to me that I had sent relatives in a nursing home years ago, which included an address for a cousin my aunt had requested. So I googled her, and found out she had died in late December. She and I had corresponded for years about genealogy, but I'd never met her. She's been a Church of the Brethren missionary in Nigeria, and one of the memorial suggestions was for the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, because that was the area where she served. Marianne Michael was 98.

Three Word Wednesday—The Christmas Letter

Three Word Wednesday gives writers, poets and those who journal a mid-week jolt of creativity. Each week, three words are selected; and participants create something with those words. Then they return to the website and post the link. This week’s suggestions:

Lackadaisical, adjective: lacking enthusiasm and determination; carelessly lazy.
Makeshift, adjective: serving as a temporary substitute; sufficient for the time being; noun: a temporary substitute or device.
Nude, adjective: wearing no clothes; naked; depicting or performed by naked people; (especially of hosiery) flesh-colored; noun: a naked human figure, typically as the subject of a painting, sculpture, or photograph; flesh color.

The Christmas Letter
by Norma J. Bruce
December 2, 2015

The page is almost nude, missing inspiration.
The 2015 Christmas letter has stalled.
It looks makeshift, a temporary substitute
For the lively travel log and holiday schedule
I had hoped to create.
My lackadaisical attitude is pushed by a short time frame,
And so  I start again. It reappears on the back of the card.
Problem solved.

Christmas letters—I love them

Some people make fun of Christmas letters, the ones from friends you hear from once a year, but I love them. Monday we caught up with friends in Texas who had lived in Columbus only one year during a recession and her company transferred her here. He worked briefly for my husband (so it was probably 1994) while trying to find a job. When we visited San Antonio 20 years ago his former employer gave us a tour of the city. Their darling little pre-school boys whose school photos we got every year are all grown up with careers, homes and one is married. Hardly seems possible.

Now instead of school and sports we're reading about the frailties of their parents, assisted living, and Alzheimer's. Janice writes of her dad: "On one of his more lucid days he told me he was going to sit right there in his chair until God came to take him home. Amen." Praise the Lord, he still knows what is important and eternal.

Today I got my first Christmas letter from cousin Barry and his wife Rose Anne. We’ve connected on Facebook, although didn’t know each other well.  I’ve only met her once, in 1993 at a family reunion.  But from the photos of the grandchildren, I’ll need to be updating the genealogy database. Another Christmas letter (hand written) from cousin Sharon in Canada included photos of the homes of our ancestor in Lancaster, PA.

Snail mail, for sure

Kelly Rogers Denton of 4 South Hannah Ave.,  Mt. Morris, Illinois says she received this letter on Tuesday, December 16th. It's postmarked December 15th, 1963 from Dixon, Illinois with another postmark from Seattle, Washington on December 11th of this year. Kelly put it on Facebook hoping to find out more information about the letter and who it was actually intended for. Kelly didn’t open the letter but believes it's a Christmas card. On FB, a discussion on the Mt. Morris determined that Carolyn Hackbarth (I went to high school with her) sent it.  I think someone knows where the Kiddell family lives. A Rockford station will do a story on Carolyn opening it. (Isn’t it illegal to open someone else’s mail?)

For me it’s doubly interesting since my family lived at 4 South Hannah where the letter was delivered.  Back in the day of 4 cent stamps you could make a wild stab at an address in Mt. Morris and the postman would get it there.  This one must have stuck in the bottom of a mail bag.  Would be interesting to know how it got to Seattle.

Contrasting the Obama and Bush Christmases

George W. Bush spent 12 Christmases at Camp David, four with his father, and 8 with his family when he was in the White House.  That is one hour and 18 minutes from DC. Obama and family have spent 17 days (so far) in Hawaii this Christmas and New Year’s, and I’m all for that—we haven’t had to listen to his boring speeches as his signature legislation falls apart and the Department of Justice attacks the Little Sisters of the Poor.

http://aboutcampdavid.blogspot.com/2010/12/christmas-at-camp-david.html

Christmas 2008 at Camp David

Not everyone has snow

But this is a lovely, if stylized, memory of Christmas as it probably never was.  I saw it at Flyover Culture on Facebook, which has the most beautiful photos of our country.  And promotes the conservative values and culture which I admire. We do have a light dusting of snow this morning and I’ll be meeting with friends of 30+ years for coffee.

Yesterday we got a note inside a Christmas card updating us on a small family we haven’t seen since Christmas 1965.  They were renters of the apartment in our duplex where we lived in Champaign, IL.  When we waved good-bye to them and their little daughter, I didn’t know we’d still be in contact almost 50 years later.  Except we aren’t. Until this year, the card simply had a signature.  Somewhere along the way the husband’s name was dropped from the card, then we got one photo card years ago with mom, daughter (now grown) and her husband.  The note reports the daughter’s daughter has just graduated from college.  However, the note which updated us, was intended for someone else and got in the wrong card.  Sigh.

ANGELS in the Roman Catholic Catechism

I. THE ANGELS

The existence of angels — a truth of faith

328 The existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal beings that Sacred Scripture usually calls "angels" is a truth of faith. The witness of Scripture is as clear as the unanimity of Tradition.

Who are they?

329 St. Augustine says: "'Angel' is the name of their office, not of their nature. If you seek the name of their nature, it is 'spirit'; if you seek the name of their office, it is 'angel': from what they are, 'spirit', from what they do, 'angel.'" With their whole beings the angels are servants and messengers of God. Because they "always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven" they are the "mighty ones who do his word, hearkening to the voice of his word".

330 As purely spiritual creatures angels have intelligence and will: they are personal and immortal creatures, surpassing in perfection all visible creatures, as the splendor of their glory bears witness.

Sorting, stashing and trashing

We (or more accurately, he) packed up the tree and poinsettias to go back to the garage attic today. I had thought that since it is shedding, this might be the year to pitch it, but he said no, it could go another year.

Today I pulled out the extended-family and friends photo albums and was determined to insert the photos we got for Christmas. Nothing is easy, however. I hadn't done this since 2003. I have two family/sibling albums, mine and my mother's (which I had made for her because she always threw photos into a box). So I also spent time combining those albums into a notebook of ungodly dimensions. It's very painful for me to give up anyone's history or photo, but I just had to make some decisions. We had 13 years of annual photographs for one family (not related), so I selected the oldest and newest and a few in between. The baby in the 1993 card now looks older than her three older sisters. Some album pages were in terrible shape. JoElla, my friend from grade school and my college roommate, kept falling out--or her 3rd grade class photo did--now she's a grandmother and I have those photos too. So I pulled out some double side tape and she's in there for good! I inserted a loose photo of my sister bottle feeding her grandson at my house in 1993 and his photo at 17 with his family. Time warp! I've finally wised up after 50 years and I just write the date on the photo--nothing worse than trying to figure out the date from the shades of hair, the shoulder pads, or lack of hair. The worst part was finding spaces for families that have divorced. Or people who have died. Makes me so sad. Our good friends in 1987 with 2 toddlers and a baby looking so happy, and again in 2000 when the oldest was heading off for college, and now it's all gone. I found the wedding invitation from the early 60s sent to my parents from my cousin--I think I'll send it to his daughter who lives here in Columbus.

Time. It just goes too fast, doesn't it?

Christmas 1965, Champaign, IL

A beautiful Christmas card

This may be the all time favorite e-Christmas card going around. It's from 2004, but never gets old. One of the lists from my high school (Bill L.) sent it this year. It comes from Ashland University here in Ohio, and I think may be one of the best PR tools a school could have. Great links, easy to read web-page.
http://ecard.ashland.edu/index.php?ecardYear=2004adm

More on this topic at my faith blog, Church of the Acronym.

About to go to press

You would think a person who can churn out 5-6 blog posts a day, keep track of 11 blogs, and write other, non-web related things could at least put together a Christmas letter before December 1. Our cards have been ready for about 3 weeks. I wrote the letter on my lap top up at the lake, but we'd brought the printer back to Columbus, and I couldn't get a wireless connection, so when I got home, I e-mailed it from the kitchen to my office, copy and pasted it into word processing, and I think we're good to go to Staples this morning. My husband did a special watercolor--and I didn't like it. I'm his biggest fan, and biggest critic. So he substituted a wonderful painting from our Alaska trip in 2001. But the original one may show up next year. When he photographed and printed it to 4 x 6, it looked fabulous. Sometimes reducing a painting hides the little defects. I thought about offering to send one to some blog readers not on the list, but realized we'd only made 200, and who knows how many read this regularly enough to see the offer. Thousands? Ha.



This is a photo of the painting on this year's card, not a scan, so you're seeing a bit of the mat, plus I've had to reduce the whatevers to get it to load--it was too large. And the letter--well, it was the most uninspired, boring thing I've ever written--"we did this, then that, and so on." Blah, blah. So you're not missing much if you missed the list. I must say, I have friends who do some incredible things--both in travel and service. We used to get photos of the children, now it is the grandchildren. Sometimes it's a pet with no people at all!

I don't think anyone will beat Marie and Wayne's Christmas letter. Marie and I became friends living in McKinley Hall at the University of Illinois 1958-1960. We haven't seen each other since graduation in 1961, but have continued to exchange Christmas cards over the years. I still have the baby pictures of her kids. I'm always worn out by the time I finish their letter, but in 2008 I think they are going to out-do even Nelson Jr., the valedictorian of my high school class who is married to a librarian and is a Professor at the University of Nebraska.

This year Marie and Wayne had

2 more grandchildren--twins--since last year's letter

5th wheel camper Nomads mission project in Florida

summer in their cabin in the Northwoods boating, fishing, etc.

two trips to London to visit their daughter and grandchildren there

month long trip to Glacier, Yellowstone and Black Hills

2 weeks in South Africa as a birthday gift from their daughter and SIL in London--safari, national parks, history--the works

volunteering at the Northern Illinois Food Bank

ministry to the homeless through the Holy Casserolers

visit from their London family for Christmas next week

Really, even with a trip to Italy in June and a mission to Haiti in February, we look pretty stodgy compared to Wayne and Marie. Still, we're so very grateful to hear from far off friends at Christmas. I love Christmas letters and catching up, even though some people make fun of them. Isn't there a song to spoof* the Christmas letters? Our church is having a special "Blue Christmas" service for people who are having a hard time being joyful or thankful.

We know a couple who lost their daughter in October. It's going to be a tough time--worse than the day-to-day grief--getting through this. I've been there and remember. Holidays can be pretty awful when someone is missing--especially a child. As an adult I probably didn't spend more than 10 Christmases with my parents, but this time of year I miss them a lot. Probably will do a Monday Memory tomorrow about Christmas 1945, if I can scrape up the memories.

Time to head for Staples. Times's a-wasting.
---------------

*Looked it up--Ray Stevens' album

"Well, we still live in the double-wide,
but Bubba's added on,
A bass-boat shed and a workshop,
and new flamingoes for the lawn,
We took down the front yard tire swing,
now that Junior's in the pen,
But it looks like a happy new year:
they moved him off death row again!

4618

What do you do with your old Christmas cards?

I love the time between Thanksgiving and Epiphany--lots of first class mail as cards and letters drop through our mail slot. Then what to do with them? My tendency to save paper memorabilia is a bit of a problem--especially what to do with what my grandmother saved from the 1880-1890s! I save the letters, the cards with notes, the hand-made or designed cards, and the cards with particularly lovely scenes--usually from a watercolor print. Over the years, that's a lot of paper!

This week we discovered something new to do with holiday greetings. We got a post card from a pastor and his wife of a church we occasionally visit. It's close by, has communion every Sunday, and offers a week day, day-time Bible study led by the pastor. (And the best reason to attend is we know nothing of the inner political squabbles that all churches have.) The postcard said they'd received many beautiful cards and letters at Christmas and each day selected one to pray for the senders, and they had prayed for us on Monday, Feb. 4. That's such a nice idea I think I'll freshen my prayer list with that idea.

Where do you display your Christmas cards?

A survey at USAToday reported 46% on a table, 22% on the fireplace mantel, and 17% on a bookshelf. It's the 15th of December. My credenza is full; we need to find a new spot. In our other house, we wrapped red ribbon around the hall closet door, and taped the back side of the card to the ribbon so it sort of became a bulletin board.



See the photo of the boys on the far right side of the mirror? I nearly cried when I saw them. Could not believe how grown up they are. They now live in Texas, but their parents lived here when they were pre-schoolers--they are now 17 and 20 and the younger one is taller than the older. Our guys met on a job interview; architecture was so slow in Texas, but my husband's firm was unable to hire this promising, young Tejano architect. We invited them to church and became friends. When they moved back to Texas two years later when the economy improved, we were sorry to see them go.

This year birds are the winners--probably 4 cardinals in the snow cards with several other species, then kittins, then lion and lamb, maybe two dogs. Only a few snowmen, and really not very many baby Jesus cards either.

We've finished the Christmas cards!

This year my computer failed the day after the night I printed out a draft of the letter and a list of the labels. So we had to hand write the cards, and run the letter through the photocopier looking a bit squiqqly, but they are done earlier than most years. Is that the unintended consequences of technology--you tend to leave it all to the last moment because you've saved a bit of time on the front end? My husband wrote some and I wrote some, and I think some of you who were supposed to get personal notes didn't if your card was addressed by him. He paints; I write.

I suppose the day will come when no one sends cards--sort of like calling cards in days of the early 20th century. My daughter and nieces still send cards, but now most of them are 40 or over and they aren't the young generation anymore, except in my mind. Do 25 year olds send Christmas cards? But I love getting the cards and photocopied letters--all the trips, the theater, the opera, the hikes and picnics, the photographs of oodles of grandbabies, and now great-grands. And of course, at my age, many of the letters contain news of terrible losses and illnesses, or sadly come with only one name when for years there were two.

As I addressed a card to a first cousin once removed (daughter of an Illinois first cousin) who lives here in Columbus on the far east side I was reminded again that I've only seen her once, in 1993 at a family reunion. I last saw her parents at my mother's funeral in 2000. I've watched her kids grow up on Christmas cards, and learn about her brothers and sisters and their children through her once a year notes. Some years I hear from her parents, some I don't.