The light thump of letters landing in my porch is wonderful, but never more so than at Christmas (although it’s hard to beat the doorbell sound of a postman delivering a package!). It is lovely to receive any of them, but the ones that have a letter or a photo with them are ultra-lovely.
And handmade ones? They’re the best.
Yet every year it’s the same: mid November a Christmas card reminder pops into my head. It’s easy to push it aside, to focus on anything else. End of November the reminder pushes back in, but I push back, stronger. By early December I realise I can’t get away from it, so I pull out the tattered box with cards left from last year’s struggle, search out the stamps, my address book, and leave them all in a conspicuous stack somewhere.
Then commences the moving of the stack. It gets shifted when we set the table, sit at the breakfast bar, have a coffee. This goes on for several days.
And then, as deadlines zoom in, I weigh the decision: do I sit down and write and address them all, stamp and post, or do I leave it – perhaps donating a sum to charity in lieu – and risk that next year, there will be far less cards through the letterbox?
There have been a couple of card-sending-less years: that is how I know how silent next year’s letterbox would be. Mostly though, I sit down and write, always astonished at how scrawly my penmanship can be.
And here is the dilemma, I have realised: I cannot bear to send cards with a brief wish and our names (but I do that, though mostly for locals, who I will probably see and talk to over the season, or in the new year). I want to write more, tell a story, relate some of our news, give a picture of life here in Dublin. But there is not enough room, and the scrawl intensifies after only a few cards, and although I do love receiving them, I am just not comfortable with the newsletter thing (but I have done that too). And sometimes our news isn’t really very newsworthy, unless you’re my children’s grandparent.
Now that I know the source of my (okay, quite minimal) angst, I’m a bit easier at letting myself just scrawl a cheery note, and sign.
This year? Some are sent, and the stack is there, waiting for the Dublin ones to be signed and sealed.
Next year? I’m hoping for a cacophony in my letterbox.
kennedy street 