One of the kids favorite Christmas traditions is….
….The assembling and mailing of our annual Christmas letter. I personally love the Christmas card tradition of connecting with friends and family from throughout the years during Christmastime. I love sending and receiving Christmas cards and especially enjoy when there is a photo enclosed. Because we have been working with teenagers for over two decades and have been blessed with forming many close friendships through the schoool ministry, our home church and my Creative Memories business – our Christmas card mailing list is quite large. While this would be a daunting task for me to do alone – with at least five capable young ladies around to help (and often their friends are here too!) – it is a breeze.
The girls look forward every year to folding, stamping, licking envelopes and adhering labels to our annual Christmas card letters! They can assemble over 400 of these in less than 3 hours while watching a Christmas movie. It is also a great time of reminiscing about the year past and commenting on (and sometimes laughing at) what Mom has said in this years letter. They also love reading each and every name – enjoying memories of those they recognize (either because they know them personally or they “know” them because they have read their annual Christmas letters & photos.) and asking about those they don’t know.
Since our letter always includes an invitation to our annual Christmas Open House, we want to get it out early in the season. My goal is to have it in the mail by December 1st! Thanks to the hard work of my daughters…the self imposed deadline was made once again this year!
I always save a copy of the letter for the album where I keep all the photos we receive. It is a great history of our family each year. After 21 years, we are currently on the second album filled with Christmas photos sent to us over the years. These albums are out for everyone to enjoy during the holidays and they are quite popular! It is so much fun to look and see how much everyone has changed from year to year, who has had new babies, or has gotten married and where people have vacationed!
I am often asked – how do you find the time to do that? It is easy…we simply read the Christmas cards at the dinner table & then put the photos immediately in the album rather than letting them collect throughout the month & then have another “task” to be completed over the new year. It takes 5 minutes after dinner (ok, maybe 15 during the last five days before Christmas when the cards arrive in greater numbers) and it is done!
The one Christmas card tradition that I keep wanting to do but have only done sporadically over the years is after Christmas to pull a card out each night throughout the next year – re-read it, pray for that family and drop them a note. (you can even write the note on the back of their card & send it as a post card!) Now that I have publicly shared this desire, perhaps this is the year I will do it!
I will post our annual Christmas letter for all my online friends to read next. Merry Christmas!
Inspire Ministries 