Only a Little OCD: Christmas Cards 2009

Every year my love affair with the good old-fashioned Christmas card begins the day we take the Christmas boxes down from the attic and I uncover the old shoebox filled with photos and letters from Christmases past.  I usually spend a good hour or so every Black Friday ogling over how cute everyone's kids are, reviewing what was new in everyone's lives in previous years, and reminiscing about our friendship with each of them.

Facebook and blogging have made keeping connected with long-lost friends easier than ever, but there's just something so irreplaceably thrilling about walking out to the mailbox and bringing in a handful of ♥love♥  in the form of smiling faces, interesting updates, and the occasional hand-written note.   I devour each letter with eager anticipation and secretly make brazen plans to pay a visit to each one of our friends wherever they are in the world to renew our friendships again (don't start panicking about us dropping by unexpectedly...my plans rarely come to fruition).   

I'm one of those crazy slightly neurotic people who wishes people would keep in touch forever.  I just love seeing how their families have grown.  I love hearing about their yearly adventures, however awe-inspiring or boring they may be.  And I'm always a little teary eyed and protective when it's time to take the cards down off the wall.  No one is allowed to tell me that it's time to take them down, nor is anyone allowed to help me take them off the wall.  I barely took them down a couple of days ago and already I find myself staring at the blank wall with a touch of longing for the familiar faces of friendships past.      

Okay. Okay.  Maybe I'm getting a little overly sentimental here, but if you think I'm a little OCD about getting Christmas cards, you should see the space in my brain that is consumed by the creation of our own Christmas cards each year.  It's a wonder I have enough brain left to type this blog post.

Not only do I mentally check off our activities during the year as being Christmas letter worthy or not, but wherever we go during the year random strangers are accosted and rallied into taking family photos of us.   Every year except this year one of those nameless photographers has taken the photo that is sent out to friends and family to be the face of our family for the next 12 months.   Little do they realize what power they wield when I hand my camera over to their bewildered hands.


This year we opted for our Blue Lily photo which we had taken in April.  It was the only time we've ever used a professional photo and the first time we haven't ordered our cards from Costco.   I figured we would never get a shot with such gorgeously brilliant lighting again, so we may as well go all the way with it.  After all it is the face of our family for the next 12 months....

The newsletter is a trifold in the exact design of one of my sacrament programs.  :)

PS   I'm curious. I have several friends who just don't like to send Christmas cards and since this viewpoint is such a foreign concept to me,  I'm interested in understanding better why people feel this way.   What it is that you like or don't like about sending and receiving cards?   

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