Spreading Christmas Cheer

Check this cute vintage Christmas postcard out.  The detail is amazing and the emotion suffuses across time through the lovely images.  Someone sent this to a friend, loved one, acquaintance, or distant relative to convey the spirit of the holiday season.  It probably sat in a drawer for years, forgotten, until one day finally being discovered and ending up for sale once again, this time to hearken back to a day when the power of the written word meant just that – the handwritten word connecting folks together. 

Christmas postcards were popular starting when, according to the website, http://oldpostcards.com, the “Pioneer Era” of postcards first was sold by vendors and exhibitors at the Colombian Exposition in Chicago, May 1893. The popularity caught on and soon these cards were sent all over the world.   Cards from this era (1893-1898), according to the site, are a rare find these days.  Collectors of these pay upwards of $20 and more for a snapshot of life over a hundred years ago.

I see these kinds of postcards all the time in my Fair City in the local antiques shops.  This time of year, they’re usually strategically placed next to the mid-century modern tinsel trees and Shiny Brite™ ornaments, the shopkeepers betting on nostalgia to make a sale.  Their sweet images and often-faded sentiments have the power to, if just for a moment, transport us to a simpler time, when faxes, iPhones™, webcams, and email were not even on the horizon.

It got me thinking about my own Christmas cards I send each year.  My annual tradition of purchasing (usually at 50% off on the days after Christmas and hopefully stowed safely away enough to be located easily later), addressing, attaching holiday stamps, and writing unique messages to my far-flung friends and relations continues, perhaps as an homage to my mother’s insistence on doing things the “old fashioned way.”  And not too many years ago, this was not an “old fashioned” thing to do.  In many ways, we still see the boxes of festive holiday cards displayed next to the cool LED lights and racks of candy canes, hot cocoa, and other accoutrements of the season.  It appears that there’s still a market for real paper cards, as evidenced by the fact that the Post Office last year handled over 203 billion pieces of correspondence.  Now while a lot of that may be bills and junk mail, I’d hazard a guess that a goodly percentage still includes “real” mail.  You know what I mean.  It’s still nice to receive something addressed to ourselves personally, in real handwriting, with our names spelled correctly, and hinting of a connection unattainable by a generic “Dear occupant” in the address window.

Call me an old-timer, a relic, a has-been, but I am one who remembers with great affection the excitement of receiving a note from my grandparents in England, sometimes even accompanied by a £5 note and instruction from my Nana to “have a Macdonalds on us!”  No doll house, no trinket, no stack of blocks, or even a shiny new bicycle could match the cache of that love that arrived within that handwritten envelope with the mysterious international stamps.

I know my time’s limited.  Every year, with the advent of more ancient relatives’ deaths, my list grows smaller and smaller.  My shelves, in the past covered with at least 20-30 beautiful cards this  year look most pathetic, with only three “real” cards to celebrate this season.  I send out my usual complement of greetings to the same folks in my dog-eared address book (yes a real paper one complete with erasures and marked-over addresses), and hope for a card in reply.  This time I only got two, and of the two, one was just a photograph with a photo-kiosk –generated wish of good cheer.  No handwriting there.  Don’t get me wrong; I am happy to get any cards in the mail but again the old-timer in me longs for that real ink on the page wishing me and my family well and conveying hopes for a prosperous, healthy, happy, or whatever New Year. 

I’m not alone in my observation that the old ways are changing.  Check out this article from the Omaha World Herald: http://tinyurl.com/noxmascards.

One day I too will succumb to the electronic lure of an E-card for the holidays.  The website http://123greetings.com will most likely add me to their ever-growing list of virtual correspondents.  And I like millions before me will click a mouse rather than lick (remember that) a stamp and send my sentiments scurrying along electronic highways to be either hopefully read or unfortunately flagged as spam by the recipient’s antivirus software. 

And the cards in my mailbox will eventually, I am sure, stop coming entirely, as my older relatives pass on and the younger generation turns to the web for their greetings.  In the meantime, I’ll keep dashing to the door when I hear the mail carrier’s boots on my porch, eager to find just one more Christmas card in the midst of the sale flyers and bills.

The cards I do receive, up to now formerly either saved for sentimental reasons or recycled in the trash, can do a little bit more good before the whole trend goes by the way of the dodo.

I’ve set up a collection for Christmas (and all other) cards in two local businesses in my Fair City.  These cards will ultimately find their way to the St. Jude’s Ranch for Children.  St. Jude’s has a 40-year history of healing for abused, abandoned and neglected children. Their Recycled Cards Program (now over 30 years old) enables the children living at St. Jude’s to make new cards by removing the front and attaching a new back, resulting in a beautiful new card. They then resell the cards online to help fund their programs.

For now, however, I will enjoy the funny penguins sliding in glittery snow lamenting their consumption of “too much Christmas pudding,” a joke only someone with relations in the UK would most likely understand, and reflect on my good fortune to have somebody thousands of miles away to think enough of me to bring holiday cheer on a wing and a stamp.

If you’d like to participate in the Recycled Cards Program, you can contact St. Jude’s at:  www.stjudesranch.org

Their mailing address is: St. Jude’s Ranch for Children, 100 St. Jude’s St, Boulder City, NV 89005

 Let’s keep the love flowing, now and at all times of the year.

Tagged as: Christmas, postcards, vintage