To follow on Hugh’s Views & News post The Dilemmas of Christmas Cards, I too am put in a quandary over Christmas cards.

It has been an unusual year and Christmas cards have not escaped the chaos. A typical year brings us cards showing family photos of nieces, nephews, children on a family vacation, and might include a letter of their yearly activities, receiving only 2 or 3 Hallmark-type Christmas cards. Our mailbox might garner 20-30 cards. (My goodness how your kids have grown!) With about a week to go, we have only received 6 cards. I have to say, I miss them. Maybe they are just late.

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Where do I display the few we have gotten?

In years’ past, I would decorate a table top and fill it with cards, the Hallmark cards taking space front row, center. It makes a festive addition to our home and we enjoy seeing the smiling faces.

It’s 2020. Very little decorating has been done here this year, but we do have an artificial Christmas tree, the bargain store, end-of-season variety, that needs a lot of fluffing of the branches to fill the gaps. Not much fluffing happened this year, so there are a lot of holes. WA-LA! I will use the cards for decorations and to fill the holes. Hopefully more cards will come.

Are we sending Christmas cards this year?

Every year Bud asks; he actually means, “Are you sending cards?” since he has no intention of being involved. We (I) always send a few cards, Mom, sisters, brothers and our close friends that we don’t see during the year. I sent out about 15 cards yesterday.

In a typical year, I dig a box of cards out of storage, sign, address, stamp and send. If I am really into Christmas I include a letter with our years’ happenings. One year on vacation, we took a picture and had a photo card made, we planned to make it a tradition. The tradition lasted one year.

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It’s 2020. I spend a fair amount of time scouring Pinterest for creative projects for home and garden. One day I came across some projects for DIY Christmas cards and decided to give making some myself a try. I gathered up some festive ornaments, package tags, paper, cards and envelopes and went to work. A fairly nice assortment of 8 resulted from my efforts. With Mom and 7 brothers and sisters needing cards, the dilemma was solved. Our friends got boxed cards.

What do you do with cards post-Christmas?

Now I recycle when possible or stash them away among the Christmas decorations.

When I was growing up we made a lot of the decorations for our Christmas trees ourselves. We received lots of pretty Christmas cards back then too and would cut them up, gluing and pasting to construction paper, felt or cloth with strings for hanging. We would use them for package tags as well. It was such a fun family project.