Besides It Being a Joy for Me

Some might view sending Christmas cards as a chore or a dreaded task, but not me. It’s one of the things I most look forward to each year at Christmas time.

In fact, (none of my friends will be surprised by this) but I usually have them done before Thanksgiving. I have to restrain myself from sending them out until afterwards.

Creating and sending Christmas cards – photo cards, to be more specific – is an absolute joy for me. Here’s how it typically goes for our family.

Each Fall, we have professional family photos taken. Once they are complete, we pick our favorites and decide which are Christmas-card worthy. (I try not to let my husband share those on Facebook ahead of the Christmas cards being sent, but sometimes he forgets – like he did this year!)

By early November, I go online and view tons of holiday, photo-card templates with different colors, layouts and phrases. I then populate a few with our pictures to see which one looks the best, and we place our order based on what the majority of us like.

Then — this is my favorite part — once we have the printed photo cards, envelopes and stamps, and our list of family and friends’ addresses from our computer, my two daughters and I sit down at the kitchen table together. We turn on Christmas music in the background, and we work as a team to stuff, address, stamp and seal the envelopes.

Admittedly, this hasn’t always been as picture perfect as it sounds.

For several years when they were younger, the placement of the stamps and return address labels was tricky – often crooked and sometimes not even in the correct corners! This drove my perfectionistic-self crazy, but I always appreciated their efforts to help.

Now that they are older, they’ve improved their dexterity, meaning we have fewer mistakes and do-overs. Still, I tend to outlast them. They are easily bored by the monotonous activity, and after awhile, they’re ready to go do something else. But I don’t mind completing the task on my own.

Why do I intentionally send them? Three primary reasons.

First, because I love to see how our family has changed over the years. The professional photos show this on their own, but I save a copy of our photo card and put it in an album solely dedicated to our family’s Christmas cards.

Tom and I started the album the first Christmas we were married. The note in the album says: “In Dec. 2007, Tom and I decided to make an annual Christmas card for our family. This book includes all of them to date.”

This makes it super easy to see the growth and changes in the girls from year to year and how my husband and I are changing, too. In addition, the album is a nice keepsake and is special to us. We create and send the cards with love, so seeing the cards all together in one place brings back a lot of love and memories as we flip the pages through the years.

Second, we like to share how we’ve changed with our friends and family – especially those we don’t see on a regular basis. (Though Facebook and other platforms have made this easier.)

Still, we like to think our loved ones and friends enjoy receiving the tangible cards and hanging them up somewhere special in their homes, like on the refrigerator, a door, or on the fireplace mantel. I know lots of families who do this. I even send one to a former employer of mine because I know she hangs the cards she receives from clients and friends in her office each year.

Third, we like to receive them from others. Our go-to place to hang the ones we receive is on the refrigerator. We clear everything else off to make room for all of them, and we tape them up there as soon as we receive them.

When the season is over, we take them down, but we don’t throw them away. We save them in a box in the basement. Why? So we can go back and look at them in the years to come. It’s fun to pull the box out every now and again to see how all the families have changed and the kids have grown. It’s a walk down memory lane.

I know sending photo cards isn’t for everyone. If they’re not your thing, that’s fine. For me and my family, they’re special. They are more than a to-do item; they’re an annual tradition. They are a joy to create, a joy to send, and a joy to receive. If you’re on our list, your card is going in the mail next week!

What about you? Do you send Christmas cards or photo cards? Are there other traditions or joyful tasks you do each holiday season? I’d love to hear about them and what they mean to you.

Yours intentionally, Amanda