Design Crafters

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.

One such postal find was a little more out of the ordinary, though. Recently, 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.

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.

If you are concerned about having enough money for your
Christmas cards and other gift items and the necessary items to throw a party
this holiday season, it’s best to try and start working early to save up and
look for good deals. I will spend this week offering some tips that hopefully
will help in this process.

First of all, now, in the springtime, is a popular time for moving. A lot of
folks who need to move, put their house on the market in the spring, hoping to
get moved before school starts in the fall. Because of this there are always a
lot of yard sales or garage sales in which you might be able to pick up.

Sometimes you can find books that look as good as new, or toys also that look
new. Often you can find nice baskets that you could use to put other new items
in to make up inexpensive but elegant gift baskets. In a couple of days I will offer a few more tips or suggestions in how to prepare for Christmas with as little stress as necessary on the wallet.