Do you keep all the Christmas cards you receive – when there’s not a postal strike and you’re actually receiving them? I keep mine! It’s so that I can bring them out again in the heat of a summer’s day and let a totally different feeling wash over me than the one I felt when I received them in the scurry of the holiday season. In fact, I enjoy re-reading them in the sun so much that one year I purposefully sent mine out in late May. That way my friends could feel that slightly giddy and off kilter thing that happens when an item appears in such a starkly out of place manner. It sort of turns people’s worlds upside down, and things related to Christmas seem to cast an immediate spell.
It was a very long time ago when I realized a commotion can come from inserting Christmas outside its traditional season. It was when I was working part time at a clothing store while in high school. For some reason our store held the power over the sound system that carried music throughout the big urban mall, and one hot summer afternoon my mischievous co-worker plunked a holiday eight-track into the machine. A holly jolly Christmas, indeed. People literally stopped in their tracks. They stopped talking and stopped shopping (which made our manager cross). They looked all around to try and figure out what was happening to their familiar world. Then some started giggling and others began to carry on, while we doubled over in laughter and our manager flipped the music switch to off. It all happened in a 10 second span, but I’m sure that strange memory stayed with those tanned, shorts-wearing shoppers.
The year I sent my cards in May struck a chord with everyone, too, and they still mention it from time to time even though it was 30 years ago. One of my friends read it while she was sitting on her lawn chair watching her little kids splash in the backyard kiddie pool. Another one picked it out of the big pile of mail that was waiting for her after a long camping road trip with her young family, and it transported her to a different mindset. She read my message about peace and love, and she sat down for a few moments of reflection before she began the task of unloading the car and starting the heaps of laundry.
The whole point of Christmas cards is to send a wish which, when you stop to think about it, is an awesome gesture to make. Someone chose or made (even better!) what they thought was the perfect card to carry their sentiments that season, and they wrote amazingly deep and loving personal thoughts on it just for you. You don’t really get that at any other time, except maybe milestone birthdays, funerals and retirements. Wishing peace in the world – like is there ever a time we don’t all need that wish? Health and good cheer, sharing the magic, calling all angels, praising the first Christmas. Joy to the world.
It’s an amazing gesture, to share that sentiment. But they all come at the same time and the impact can get lost in the crowd. It also arrives during holiday burnout and overspending, questionable social obligations and bad roads to get to them. Excess everything. But the spring is a time of renewal and rebirth, optimism for all the joys that lay ahead, new growth and bursts of colour. What a perfect time to honour the meaning of the holidays – when things actually are merry and bright!