After graduating college, every December I’d sit down and handwrite a few dozen Christmas cards for friends and family. It seemed like a good way to reach out to people I don’t see very often, and a fun tradition. Over the years, the number of people on my list grew. Eventually it wasn’t practical to handwrite everything, so I’d make newsletters or custom cards. They became more elaborate, too, and morphed into crazy, often silly designs. Soon there was a sort of expectation from friends about what we’d send… What wacky card will the Schroeders send this year?
Sometime around 2013, our list passed 200 people.
Last Christmas I ordered 350 cards. We keep accumulating friends!
Even though we’re serving a mission, I felt like it was important to keep the tradition alive. In fact, it seemed even more important because there are some people on my list who don’t really hear from me (or me from them) but once a year. So they wouldn’t even know we were serving a mission! What better way to update them on this big change in our lives? I shifted my creative gears to come up with a design for our annual card.
A postcard seemed appropriate. I modeled it on one of those old-school cards you’d buy at a gift shop.
Oh, and we had to update our list. We’ve met so many great people here: all the missionaries we’ve served with in the Valley, the senior missionaries scattered around San Diego, our young adult group, our seminary class, and of course the friends we’ve met in our wards. By the time we finished our spreadsheet, we’d reached 460 names. Oof.
At this point our process is a well-oiled machine. Designing the card takes the most time– by far– and then it’s all about creating an assembly line to stuff envelopes and label and stamp everything. We finished this evening.
Is an “assembly line” card a little impersonal? Probably. But is it a tradition I think is worth continuing? Definitely.