Do you send out holiday cards every year? Maybe some years? Do you do a full on holiday letter? I try to send out a card every year, but sometimes it doesn’t happen. Our last move fell over the holidays and I skipped our card that year. I also don’t do a full letter. The prospect of writing, printing, and stuffing that into so many envelopes is too much for me. So I go the easy commercial route, a card with some pictures (mostly of the kids) and a quick blurb on the back. I even have the envelopes preprinted with addresses (I spend enough time just trying to update the large number of military addresses that change every two years).

If you do send out cards, or letters, do you save one for your files?

When I received a large box of unsorted family pictures from my Grandma Dora mixed into the many pictures of cows, pigs, and horses were three holiday cards that had been sent when my father was just a small boy. I never knew my Grandma Dora had ever sent a holiday card. But apparently, she did, at least three years. Were those the only three years she did that? Once she hit five kids, was Christmas too busy to make the cards anymore? Was there a letter that accompanied them? These pictures raise several questions, but they also give me pause. I was never under the impression that that side of the family would do a holiday card. Perhaps, there are parts of our families, even the closer generations, that we don’t know about.

1954

1957

1958

I have always known that the other side of the family sent a long, informative holiday letter every (or almost every) year. I remember when I was very young we had our first computer, and my mother typed up Grandma Geneva’s letter. We even have a couple of her letters from many years before. These letters are so wonderful, they give a full recap of an entire year. Of course, they mostly hit the happy occurrences, not the everyday struggles. But that also provides me with a look at how my grandmother viewed that past year. What she considered important.

1964 was an important year for my grandparents!

It is interesting that we make these letters and cards and pictures and send them to people, but don’t always consider them as part of our family story that needs to be saved and documented for our direct descendants. What do you do with all the cards and letters that you receive every year? Do they go into the recycling, or do you save them? Scan them?

I came across a letter in my Grandma Dora’s items from a distant family member from her husband’s side. The letter details a visit this family member made to them in Nebraska (she lived in Washington, DC). The letter also notes that she is including the Christmas card that Grandma had sent to her, plus copies for “your children.” Could this be one of the pictures in that box? The letter writer thought that Grandma might want one of her own pictures back and even extras to give to her grown children.

I think about this every year when I send my cards. I inevitably receive one or two (or more) cards back with a “wrong address” so I often have several of our own cards. I try to save them in my Addresses folder – but think that someday I should really put them in a scrapbook, or a yearly photo book, so that they aren’t lost. And hopefully, my kids will remember that we (almost) always sent out a holiday card. If nothing else, they should remember that “holiday cards” were always on my unending to-do list. I certainly stress over that list often enough.