Highlights from my holiday cards
Usually I craft 3-5 impersonal messages for holiday cards, and then send them with a personal note for each person. This year, I tried to give each of my recipients a sense of my holiday/winter joy.
Here are some highlights:
Every year I keep an eye out for skeleton nutcrackers and this year I found a 3.5-foot one from Five Below that now lives in my living room. It's glittery but not overtly "Christmasy" so I will probably keep it out all year. I also found a small shelf nutcracker with a drum at Safeway last month. CRUSHING IT with nutcrackers this year.
One of my December time snacks is the red and green tortilla chips with a mango habanero salsa and sour cream, plus 3-4 mandarins, and eggnog.
I wrote about opening small gifts on Christmas Eve, walking around DC at night before New Year's when the lights still decorate everyone's homes but the mood reflects a hopeful future, getting back to life after holidays end, and braving a winter storm with a cat on your lap.
Instead of a snapshot of solstice and Christmas like I originally intended, my cards took a snapshot of early winter.
Cards this year included snowflakes and a Santa scene. For some of them, I drew on the card to change the theme a bit. Everyone got a gingerbread house on the envelope which was decorated with sort of generic red/green mail art. 25 people got an extra card with pictures of Zenny from the year. Later, many people got Valentines.
I ended up sending many of my winter cards late, but between being sick and traveling and taking care of my cat, I didn't get all of them out until the first week of February.
Weirdly in some of my letter writing sessions I found out that I had already filled out some of the cards, but just didn't close the envelope and mail it.
What a weird season for mail, totally unfocused but still determined. I am not beating myself up about this, though. Sometimes things take longer than you thought they would.