For the third time in my entire life, I’m thinking about Christmas before late November. Cards specifically. It’s absolutely the best part of the holidays for me. For the record, ‘Christmas card’ is loose terminology. New Years Cards or Happy End of Last Year Cards are probably more accurate. Whenever they get mailed, they are always an I love you to my people.

Forget the materialism and crap music we can’t escape every December. Focus only on the gazillions of Earthlings all thinking about those they love and how to be generous with them. What powerful juice that is. Gives me happy chills.  (Not to discount the misery many folks feel around the holidays. Their pain is real and I respect that my glee is no substitute for their real feelings to the contrary.)

Making cards is one of the few projects I enjoy from seed to harvest.  Imagining, doodling, assessing the current collection of envelops and papers. Allowing myself to linger in the photo collection amassed throughout the year, noting my family’s changes and growth spurts. Going through my address book and email lists to determine a final count. Whittling a huge idea into something that fits a tight budget. Making mock ups and eventually bringing a two dimensional sketch into something I can hold. Creating a silly address label. Even addressing envelops with the right movie as company – something I have previously saturated myself with like say Star Wars (IV, V, VI), Harry Potter (all of ‘um), Princess Bride, Waiting to Exhale, a whole season of Sex and the City  – you feel me.

It’s a gift to me to spend a wee bit of in-my-mind time with the folks I’ve gathered in my life and those I inherited that fill me up with love. Sifting through a personal history of card making has been fairly entertaining, thinking the next couple posts will be dedicated to the preservation of such non-sensery.

Then there are the cards that come my way – what a joy to see my friends and their ever morphing kiddos. My family far and wide. Cousins and 2nd cousins and previous co-workers, and new acquaintances. My sweet great aunt who never fails to write a three page letter. Not copied! Hand written! I even love the cards we get from the Austin Wildlife Rescue.

I’ve collected and cherished these sacred scrapes of my tribe’s earliest recorded history since I was old enough to have my own address. Before that even. So much cuteness and thoughtfulness and beauty and peeks into the worlds of those I love.

Alas, the paper bits have piled up and are bound to do what piles do – decay. And yes, it is a powerful and unstoppable process. Mass changing shape and form. Hard to soft, dry to wet. Precious paper to silverfish poop. We can slow it down some, but there is no real stopping it, nor can there be. Without decay, there would be no room for the new, the fresh, the evolved.

But better to be worn out than rotted out. Seen and touched and used and loved. Fantasies of repurposing holiday cards have floated around my head for years and as my collection is now grown in volume such that I no longer want to expand my precious storage space to accommodate it, this might be the year for catharsis.