On the Christmas Card List.

I’ve been writing Christmas cards.  I wonder how long this custom will last, given internet cards with singing, dancing and flashing lights appearing on our screens.  At present, the two methods seem to coexist, with some preferring the old and some the new.

            The Christmas card list, however, is likely to endure. I find it dismaying to see each year how the list has diminished, due to deaths, divorces, transfers: moves from job to job and house to house (and country to country) and simply dropping off the tree. This can pose problems for the Christmas card writer. Where not enough care was taken last year to record the correct address (some unreadable ones scratched out so many times or so whited over that X-rays couldn’t decipher them) there’s no recourse but to wait for the addressee to send a card and hope they’ve printed a return address on the back.

            Did we write down all the kid’s names?  Have we got the right partner (how embarrassing to greet the one a couple of times prior to this coupling) and are we sending merry wishes to someone recently bereaved? If you only hear from someone once a year, a lot can happen since you last touched noses.

            Then there’s deciding which card to send. Do we buy a box of mixed cards and toss them around? Do we support charities, so a few cents of our greetings attend upon good causes? Do we want classy cards for artistic friends, sentimental cards for family valuables, funny cards for those who, presumably, need cheering up? Religious cards, for those who like religious texts?

            Do we send cards to friends of other religious? I find that “Peace on Earth” is acceptable in most circumstances. And sometimes I’ll get “Merry Christmas” in return, even when the recipient is a Buddhist. That’s a kindly thought, much appreciated, in the presence of universal illusion.

            Indeed, while the Christmas card may well be about Christmas — whatever interpretation we may place on Christmas, from red reindeer on upwards — the Christmas card list is really about New Year.  Or perhaps the transition from Old Year to New. To have a time when we examine our relationships, even in this fragmentary way, to see how many have lasted through months, years, or decades. To see what has gone by the board, and why: left that job, didn’t get in touch, no longer live here, haven’t heard in years, can’t stand the new spouse, it was ages ago, don’t want to go there.

            What do you want to carry into the New Year? What can you afford to carry: mentally, emotionally, spiritually? Are some people on the list bad for you, or are they just absent? What about absence in general? When, where, and to whom do you wish to be absent yourself?

            Absent is the opposite of Advent, it seems to me, writing this on Gaudete Sunday, everyone dressed in rose. Advent is about presence, divine presence that will never leave the list, if list there be. Our names are engraved in our unimaginable billions in the divine mind, never to fall off or out of sight. And as we move from Old Year to New, we take with us the titles of our Saviour recited in the antiphons of Advent: O Sapientia (O Wisdom), O Adonai (O Lord) … right through to O Emmanuel (God is with us). Therefore we may rejoice.