Design Crafters

Some folks just love to send out Christmas cards, while other folks REALLY love to send out Christmas cards.  The next time you groan at the thought of all the work that goes into sending out your Christmas cards, thank your lucky stars you don’t have a Christmas card list of 3,000 people.  Not only that, but remember how happy receiving a Christmas card from a friend or family makes you and, in turn, how happy receiving your Christmas card will make your family and friends. 

Giving someone happiness, no matter how large or small, is well worth the time and effort.  Despite that, rest assured that you’re not alone if you find that sending out your Christmas cards is quite a chore – many folks find that the whole process of selecting the cards, writing the notes, addressing the envelopes, and stamping the cards to be a significant and somewhat overwhelming chore during the already jam-packed holidays.

If you’d call yourself overwhelmed by holiday errands, then be glad you’re not Father Naus in Michigan.  He’s a college professor who sends just under 3,000 Christmas cards each year to former students, colleagues, friends, and even acquaintances.  He believes strongly in the importance of letting people know they’re in your thoughts, as well as a Christmas card’s significance in a friendship. 

He knows that it’ll take up a great deal of his time during the holidays, but the odds are good that each and every one of the recipients of Father Naus’ Christmas cards are honored and happy to receive them in the mail.  As a result of that, he’s happy to invest the time and effort in sending out nearly 3,000 Christmas cards each year.  Who could argue with those kinds of results for a few hours of writing out Christmas cards?

The numbers are staggering.  Each and every year during the holiday season, mailmen all over the country and world are kept very busy delivering holiday greetings to everyone on your block (and the next block, and the next block…).  Typically, most households receive Christmas cards from friends and family, but often other cards will appear in the mailbox.  You guessed it:  I’m talking about those Christmas cards that are sent by companies or businesses.

For example, just this past Christmas, we received holiday greetings from our vet, our lawn service company, the tax accountant we use from time to time, the realtor who sold us our house, the attorney who worked with us on buying our house and setting up wills, our child’s pediatrician, and our family dentist.   My husband would like to add our congressman to the list, but I am not sure that a card from the Distinguished Gentleman from District 8 truly counts as a business Christmas card.  The cards were just as handsome as those sent by friends and family, even if the message came from a business.

While no one will argue that the motivation behind a business sending out Christmas cards to their client or customer list might be viewed negatively by some, but others would argue that they rather like knowing that they mean enough to their dentist or realtor to receive holiday greetings.  And, in the end, who doesn’t like getting mail from a business that isn’t a bill or invoice?  Especially mail that wishes a Merry Christmas and a very happy new year – that’s happy mail no matter who the sender.

Many times each holiday season, we ponder the question: is Christmas too commercial? You may have noticed there are fewer religious messages (or any acknowledgement of the Savior’s birth at all) on Christmas greeting cards these days. I’ve even noticed the ones that do acknowledge the true reason for the season, are often hideous or are not quite the message I’m looking for. I have to look really hard to find nice ones. Am I just looking in the wrong places?

Despite the occasional trouble finding the card of my dreams, this brings up one of the many beauties of photo Christmas cards. You can add any picture and any phrase you’d like. Religious or not. It also means a lot more to have a personalized card like that. Think about it…When you receive Christmas cards in the mail, which ones do you notice? Which ones mean more? A certain family member of mine saw me writing this blog post and answered “the ones with the money in them.” That’s not quite what I meant, but had to laugh anyhow. Somebody’s getting a lump of coal in their stocking!

I’m sure I’m not alone in that when I receive Christmas cards with pictures and/or a personal note, those mean so much more to me than a pre-printed impersonal message.  I can also put the photo greeting cards in a photo album.  The recipients of your Christmas cards are likely to enjoy such cards from you, too.

It seems as if every few months, a Christmas card that was mailed long ago (fifty, sixty, or even 100 years in the past) resurfaces in the mail and is delivered. One can’t help but wonder where the cards were hiding all that time, but it sure is interesting to look at the stamps and cards from the past.

This one is a little different from those such things. Earlier this year, a Dutch schoolteacher found a real one-of-a-kind Christmas card in his family’s antique store near Amsterdam. The Christmas card (very similar to a postcard, actually) was signed by Anne Frank, a 13-year-old German girl whose diary later became the most widely-read Holocaust-related book.

This long-forgotten Christmas card was sent in 1937 and addressed to Samme Ledermann, one of Frank’s best friends. It was postmarked from Aachen, a town just across the Dutch border in Germany. The front of the card was a picture of a Christmas-decorated bell in front of a snow-covered field. There was no message beyond the address and signature.

Amazing!  The schoolteacher found the Christmas card while gathering materials for on Anne Frank for his school to mark Liberation Day, which marks the anniversary of the end of German occupation in World War II. Liberation Day takes place on May 5.  Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis for just over two years in a secret apartment in an Amsterdam office building. The Frank family and others in the apartment were arrested in August 1944 and deported to Auschwitz. Anne died in a concentration camp just two weeks before the camp was liberated in March 1945.

“Let’s stay in touch!” A large part of why millions of people worldwide send Christmas cards to their family and friends is to stay in touch and to send out holiday greetings and well-wishes. After all, the “trend” of sending Christmas cards is now well into its second century…and still going strong.

For others, another reason that so many folks wouldn’t even consider not sending out Christmas cards one year is because the cards themselves are memories in the making. They make a fantastic snapshot of the times of the family who might be sending the cards For example, it’s rather likely that at one point or another, you’ve looked at old Christmas cards and said to someone,“oh look at this old family photo on the card; can you believe that little Mary Ann hadn’t even been born yet?” Or perhaps your family is the kind who can date a photo on a Christmas card going by the house that the photo was taken in (“that’s definitely the house in Springfield. Oh, I haven’t thought of that house in years.”). And of course there’s the ever-popular past-time of being both amused and slightly embarrassed by the clothing choices you might’ve made 20 years ago, as in “wow, I wore some really big glasses back then. Those were very stylish at the time, if you can believe it.”

If you are someone who loves to save old letters and Christmas cards, you already understand what a potential future treasure trove your old Christmas cards will be to you one day. Just think: if you can get such a kick out of looking at old photos and holiday greetings, your someday grandchildren and great-grandchildren might find it even more fun to see them.

It’s okay to admit that you do it!  After all, it’s a long-standing and time-honored tradition for countless American families to take their children to see Santa each year, and to treasure the photographs they take there each year.  In much the same way, there are pet dogs and cats who visit Santa each Christmas and have their photos taken there (often for use on the family’s Christmas card).  We say why not?  After all, even our four-legged friends should get to enjoy the joy and wonders of the Christmas season.No one would argue with you if you said that the holidays are a time for enjoying the Christmas spirit with friends and family.  For many people (over 60% of American households, according to some sources), some very important members of their family are their pets.  As a result, it’s becoming more and more popular to include a family pet or pets in the family photo that often ends up on a Christmas card that’s mailed out far and wide.

More than ever before, in many cases, the family pets – be they cats, dogs, ferrets, birds, or whatever other furry or feathered friend – are treated as the family’s children, and indeed, many such households are childless but still consider themselves families.  As such, many households with beloved pets are going all out during the holiday season, much as proud parents of human children would do.  Special holiday taste treats, adorable cat-sized Santa hats or toy reindeer antlers for dogs to wear, and of course, their own special Christmas stocking to hang on the mantel that can be filled with pet toys and treats to be opened on Christmas morning.

It’s so frustrating!  You’ve gone to all the trouble of getting everyone dressed up and looking presentable, posing in front of the camera, kids fidgiting, adults trying to keep smiling, and then you look at the photos and see that someone in your family blinked just as the photo was taken.  Ugh!

Now you can save the photo (and the day) by making small, subtle, but very effective edits to the digital photo. Professional photographers and ad agencies have been using photo editing software tricks for years, why not take advantage of the technology and end up with your all-time best family photo for your Christmas card this year? If you’ve ever wanted to have a family photo without tears, flyaway hairs, or even blemishes for your Christmas cards, but never did manage to get that perfect photo, then let us tell you a little secret:  photo editing software programs.  These little miracle programs have saved the day for countless families each and every holiday season for the past few decades.

Forget about those awful times you’d look at photos and be disappointed by the many things that are wrong with them.  With the wonder of photo editing software, we have photos where none of the kids are throwing fits or refusing to look at the camera.  We have photos where the baby’s drooly chin is amazingly drool-free.  We even have photos where the dogs are sitting quietly at our feet and looking at the camera along with every member of the family.  All thanks to photo editing software. It takes some trial and error, and a lot of practice, but it’s possible to remove stray hairs, unsightly blemishes, and clean up the dreaded red-eye from the camera’s flash…and the end result is your dream family photo to go on the front of your Christmas card.

The Sugar Plum Fairy’s suite, the smell of fresh Christmas trees, the taste of gingerbread cookies:  What’s your holiday moment?  Everyone has something, some event or food or book (or even a piece of music) that makes it feel like the holidays.  Each year, a few weeks before Thanksgiving, my family and I start planning a trip to the local Christmas tree farm. It’s a wonderful tradition we began before the children were even born. It has sort of become the unofficial start to our holiday season, and a very lovely way to kick it off, too. Hayrides, hot cocoa, baked goods, holiday greenery, Christmas carols playing in the background, and acres and acres of future Christmas trees.

My family and I first went to the Christmas tree farm with some friends, who had asked us to go with them. While there, they turned to us and asked us to take some photos of their whole family, standing in front of the rows of beautiful live Christmas trees. We were happy to snap a few shots with their camera for them, and then we found “the perfect” tree for our home, so we quickly forgot taking those few family photos. But our friends didn’t forget, and a few weeks later, we opened our mailbox to find a Christmas card from them, with one of the photos we’d taken for them on the card smiling back at us.

Their Christmas card photo was fantastic!  In fact, it turned out so well that we decided we would like to “borrow” the idea for our own cards someday. And that’s just what we did. It’s fun to look back at our little collection of photos from the Christmas tree farm that we’ve amassed now; each and every one of them was taken for that year’s Christmas card.  It’s a great tradition that the kids and adults alike look forward to each holiday season.

Are you an only child, part of your own version of The Brady Bunch, or something in between?  Me, I’m the little sister in my family, and I’d always see those neighborhood kids who had a large number of brothers and sisters, because it seemed to me that they must have a great deal of fun along with the houseful of kids.  Noise and fun, of course.  It was only when I grew up and got my own family full of kids that I realized just how much work, in all manner of different forms, a houseful of kids can be.  To begin with, think of how just being prepared for the birthday presents and Christmas cards alone would be a full-time job!

Can you imagine how much work that is for someone with a large family?  Just ask an 88-year-old woman in the U.K. who really has her hands full when it comes to sending out her Christmas cards.  Simply to send out a card to each one of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, Mrs. Graham needs to have a whopping 117 Christmas cards each year!  She concedes that it is certainly hard to keep track of where everyone lives, but of course, each of her seven children, 30 grandchildren, and 74 great-grandchildren surely appreciate the effort she makes.  We suspect that Mrs. Graham probably has taken to sending out holiday greetings just to her family, to save on time and effort, not to mention the cost of postage.  Still, it’s surely easier than buying Christmas presents for them all.

Our point is that people love being thought of during the holidays and a Christmas card is a lovely way to let them know they’re in your thoughts.  As Mrs. Graham knows very well and could tell you, no matter the size of your family – immediate, extended, or just honorary – the folks on your Christmas card list enjoy receiving holiday greetings from you each year. So don’t stop sending those cards!

Is Christmas too commercial? You may have noticed there are fewer religious messages (or any acknowledgement of the Savior’s birth at all) on Christmas greeting cards these days. I’ve even noticed the ones that do acknowledge the true reason for the season, are often hideous or are not quite the message I’m looking for. I have to look really hard to find nice ones. Am I just looking in the wrong places?

Despite the occasional trouble finding the card of my dreams, this brings up one of the many beauties of photo Christmas cards. You can add any picture and any phrase you’d like. Religious or not. It also means a lot more to have a personalized card like that. Think about it…When you receive Christmas cards in the mail, which ones do you notice? Which ones mean more? A certain family member of mine saw me writing this blog post and answered “the ones with the money in them.” That’s not quite what I meant, but had to laugh anyhow. Somebody’s getting a lump of coal in their stocking!

I don’t know about you, but when I receive Christmas cards with pictures and/or a personal note, those mean so much more to me than a pre-printed impersonal message.  I can also put the photo greeting cards in a photo album.  Just a thought to remember for this Christmas’ preparations.

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