Design Crafters

Competitors, take note.  Everyone has a little bit of competitiveness in them.  For some folks, writing The Best Christmas Card Letter to enclose with your family’s Christmas card really brings out the competitor in them!  No one wants to be that family with the letter that is unintentionally hilarious in its dour and bland recounting of the past year, after all.  No, the big rewards come with the wittiest letters, the ones that best reflect the sending family’s personalities while also giving a quick written snapshot of the past year’s events.

The point is that when it comes to the letter to accompany your Christmas card, you can’t please every single person in your audience, but if you start off by pleasing yourself, you’re likely doing fine….but we would hasten to add that using red or green somewhere in the letter is a great start.  And it couldn’t really hurt to include a photo of the family dog wearing a Santa hat, too.  Cuteness almost always guarantees points.

We hear you (or, more likely, the competitor in you) wonder, “What goes into a winning Christmas card letter?” The truth is that endless debates rage about this very topic.  Some people love reading the newsy types of letters, while others argue that their favorites are the letters that rhyme.  The funny letters are skyrocketing in popularity (both to send and to receive), as are the ironic or clever ones.  You’ll occasionally see themed letters, top ten letters, letters as jigsaw puzzles, and even letters with multiple choice quizzes about the family’s year.  One extremely popular letter format is to use a photo essay approach to the year-end wrap-up—after all, pictures speak a thousand words, right?

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.

I will try to wrap up our story here in this
post.  Over the years, particularly the summers as my son was home from
college, he would help to develop our Christmas card site and it has come a
long way since the beginning when there were no tools available and he had to
do everything from scratch. He still does most everything from scratch, but now
it’s by choice.

As my daughter got older, she learned how to do graphics work in Photoshop and
started helping me by doing the logos and custom verses - virtually any and all
of the custom work that comes along with so many of our Christmas card orders.

My younger son, who was in kindergarten when I started this business, has
helped in the last few years by running errands to the paper supply warehouse,
the printer, the post office, etc. It has literally become a family affair.

The first two have graduated debt free with a nice (paid off) car, and the
older son holding down a high paying job out in southern California.
My daughter continues to work with me full time and my younger son has his car
and is enjoying his second year at University working on his business degree.

Now we have two full time employees, besides myself and 6 part time who come
during our busy months to help us get through the busy season. God has richly
blessed our business and we have a great time together loving what we do:
Helping others to experience touching base with family, friends, and clients
with beautiful Christmas cards with touching sentiments that they can be proud
of.  Take time to browse our Christmas cards. I’m sure you will find something
appropriate for almost any circumstance or taste.