Waste Your Time on Me

Yesterday I had to go to the post office to get stamps.  The place was a zoo and I had to wait in line behind four people which doesn’t normally happen in Smalltown, USA at 2:30pm.  I was already running behind but I waited patiently.  As I was standing in line, I saw a little old lady come in with who must have been either her daughter or her care giver.  She was all bundled up, even though it was a balmy 60 degrees in southwest Virginia yesterday.  She had a stack of Christmas cards in her hand secured with a rubber band.  I watched her meticulously place the stack of cards in the outgoing mail slot.

As she turned around and walked back out, it made me think of the tradition of Christmas card exchanging. 

According to THIS article I found, it seems that the idea of Christmas cards go all the way back to the middle ages. 

Who knew? 

In the 1800’s, hand-made cards were the trend and were made by hand and exchanged by hand.  So many cards were exchanged in 1822, that sixteen extra mailmen had to be hired.  According to a couple of my friends who work for the USPS currently, they need to take a page out of THAT book and hire some help for our poor postal workers today!  Ok, off that soapbox for now.  Ahem.   

A few more years passed and in 1875, Christmas cards were being mass produced and that’s the way most of us grew up participating in the Christmas card exchanges—buying boxes of mass produced cards, taking them home, signing them, perhaps writing a note inside and then hand addressing each and every one for friends and family. 

Christmas card exchanging has been declining since the 70’s when making a long distance call became reasonable.  Since then, we have ushered in the subsequent decades with one new fancy schmancy new form of communication after another. 

So is Christmas card exchanging obsolete in our digital age?  Twenty years ago, a lot of my friends and family only heard from me once a year when they received that Christmas card.  Today, there’s a good chance they know what I cooked burnt for dinner last night.  Times are a changing’!  I can send a 'Merry Christmas' email, Facebook message, tweet, blog, Instagram, text…well you get the picture (no pun intended.)

So why waste your time?

Because that’s the whole point people!  It’s nice to receive a piece of paper from somebody who wasted their time on you!

It’s nice to stop for a half hour in our busy lives and sit down with a box of paper cards and that ole quill and hand write something to someone to let them know that they are thought of. 

We do a Christmas Card exchange at our church each year.  I have thought this was very silly in the past.  Most of these people we see every Sunday, after all.  A couple of years ago, someone in our church took the time to sit down and write a personal note to everyone in our church—a note specifically for that person or family to let them know what they have meant to her faith walk.  It was inspiring and humbling and just right down awesome.

So this is my point…
Umm yes, I do actually have one.

I don’t care if you are pro-Christmas card or anti-Christmas card.  I don’t care if you think it’s a treasured tradition that must be carried on or an archaic caveman ritual that is obsolete. 

Social  media gets its fair share of bashing, but the truth of the matter is that I am far more connected to my friends and family today than I EVER have been in the past.  And to me, that makes sending an archaic, cavewoman Christmas card via snail mail all the sweeter to me.

However you decide to send your Christmas greetings this year, just be sure to waste spend your time telling your friends and family what they mean to you.  I promise it won't be a waste.  

Merry Christmas!  Flicker on!

~A