I’ve been working on our Christmas cards this week. Every year, sending and receiving Christmas cards is one of my favorite parts of the season. We have friends all over the country and all over the world from the various stages of our lives: childhood, college, Marine Corps, business school, Chicago, San Diego, Palo Alto, Los Angeles. I’m friends with some of them on Facebook, but for the majority, these are people I really care about, but that I’m unlikely to run into face to face. I love that I’m able to see them again and watch their children get bigger each year.
And what better time to celebrate the relationships that bind us together than at Christmas?
Easter is the most significant and triumphant time of our Christian year, but boy with Lent and Holy Week it can be an exhausting and emotional time. Advent and Christmas don’t feel that way to me. Advent is a time of joyous and mindful preparation in our home. A time of making time for friends and family. A time of inviting people into our home to share prayers or a meal.
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| that’s my dad on the lower right |
And, for our out of town friends, who unfortunately we cannot see in person, we lovingly prepare a Christmas card in which we share photos and stories from our year.
My family has always done photo Christmas cards. My parents have an album of them on the coffee table and I can page through it and see our family grow year by year. My dad’s parents always sent out a photo Christmas card, too.
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| that’s me on the lower left, in my grandparent’s card |
I can just imagine the cards Mary might have sent to their friends:
Or, ya know, something like that.
Now back to work . . .
