25 Days of Memories: Day 4

December 4th

Christmas cards. These things are such a necessary evil to so many people. Even now, I have a love-hate relationship with them. It was always exciting as a child to see the stacks of mail come in, with all the different-colored envelopes that you didn’t see any other time of the year. It seemed I didn’t know a lot of the people we got cards from, but isn’t that the way it usually goes?

Our family was never much for the family newsletters; I don’t recall getting very many of those, if ever, and my parents never sent one out either. The most exciting things we ever got in Christmas cards were the cousins’ or nieces’ and nephews’ school pictures.

My favorite cards were always the ones with a lot of glitter on them. It didn’t matter what the picture was, as long as it was covered with glitter. An added bonus for me (but not so much for my mom) was that the glitter always fell off onto my hands, the table, the floor. It seemed we had a reminder of those cards for months after they were gotten rid of (my parents weren’t sentimental and didn’t keep every card they got).

One especially memorable year for me was the year Doug had gone to college in New Mexico. He didn’t come home for Christmas much because it was too expensive to either drive or fly home. He sent a Christmas card to both Gary and me. They were quite different than any cards we had seen before. There were no snowy landscapes or pictures of Santa; those cards had road runners on them. Of course, there were some touches of Christmas, like a few Christmas balls here and there, but it was definitely a “New Mexico” type card.