Mrs RR made me get the candle bridges (menorahs?) down from the loft. Praise be that (a) I found them and (b) they still work! Now I have to find the extension leads. These are not to be found except by prayer and fasting. For me, the stresstive season has started.
OMG, you guys have menorahs? I’ve just ordered a battery operated one, since the cats make me nervous of lighting any candles…
I should put out my Mensch on a bench this year!
(I’m Jewish by blood on my mother side and since becoming a Christian (wasn’t raised in any religion) I’ve gotten much more interested in my ancestry.)
Just went to a performance of Messiah, by the university choir in the nearby big (regional Australian-wise) city. I last went in 2007 -- I forgot how much I enjoy it.
And I also enjoy hearing all the wonderful things people are up to here.
We went yesterday to see a younger family member in a (very well done) performance of The Nutcracker.
Am I the only one who thinks the story of The Nutcracker is really weird? At least, that is, to the degree there is a story? Any semblance of a plot seems to be abandoned in the second act.
My German Granny-in-law called it the 'Cracknutter'.
Heh!
All ballets have weird stories. Fact.
True, but The Nutcracker is weird even accounting for a baseline of general weirdness. Herr Drosselmeyer is downright creepy; I wouldn’t want him anywhere near my children, much less make him godfather to my daughter.
I'll hazard a guess that the waterfalls were in full spate...
Arkland the Drear is being brightened up by festive lights on several Arks - far more than last year! - although it's still rather wet and windy here. I haven't spotted any Holy Penguins (or Dinosaurs) yet.
Well, the evil Feathers disguised himself as a chicken once upon a time, so maybe he'll try being a seagull, or a sparrow, or something...he'll never be a Holy Penguin, or anything else, being a far too maleficent and malicious malefactor.
Well, the evil Feathers disguised himself as a chicken once upon a time, so maybe he'll try being a seagull, or a sparrow, or something...he'll never be a Holy Penguin, or anything else, being a far too maleficent and malicious malefactor.
Well, he could repent... doesn't seem like the sort of storyline we usually get from Wallace and Gromit, though.
I'll hazard a guess that the waterfalls were in full spate...
Arkland the Drear is being brightened up by festive lights on several Arks - far more than last year! - although it's still rather wet and windy here. I haven't spotted any Holy Penguins (or Dinosaurs) yet.
I set up my knitted Nativity set yesterday. The Wise Men are on their way on the top of the bookcase, accompanied by a Triceratops.
Trees are up. Lights in the front window are up. Got a bit more to do. Meat for Christmas dinner is ordered but I have to decide on some canapés as starters.
Had a sad moment looking around the Christmas Tat in the shops yesterday. It always reminds me of Christmases long ago and when I think of the people in those long ago and not so long ago Christmases I realise that what many of them have in common is that they are no longer alive.
In the original Hoffmann story, isn't Drosselmeyer Death? or so I've read.
I don’t think so, though I haven’t read it. But I can’t find anything along those lines in synopses of Hoffmann’s story. But he is apparently even creepier than in the ballet.
Cards posted, all presents bought...they will be delivered by hand next week.
Today's Expotition to Tesco was OK, but only because the Nice Ladies on the self-service tills did the work for me IYSWIM. All the check-outs were so busy that I'd probably still be queuing now...
I'd forgotten that not only is it Christmas tomorrow (seemingly), but that Storm Darragh had kept people in at the weekend, causing them to run out of bread, milk, and loo rolls.
Well, we do, but they're not exclusively the ancestors of penguins. And to be fair, we never know we've got an actual ancestor - we can only say we have a specimen very like what we would hypothesise the ancestor of a given group would look like. Acanthostega *could* be ancestral to later amphibians, but it's more likely it went extinct and a closely related genus or family we don't have fossils of actually won the genetic lottery of life.
Trees are up. Lights in the front window are up. Got a bit more to do. Meat for Christmas dinner is ordered but I have to decide on some canapés as starters.
Had a sad moment looking around the Christmas Tat in the shops yesterday. It always reminds me of Christmases long ago and when I think of the people in those long ago and not so long ago Christmases I realise that what many of them have in common is that they are no longer alive.
Gathering people seems to be harder today than I think I remember from years ago. When I was young, we went every Christmas Eve to my paternal grandparents'. There was a sit-down diner of Slovak fare, a gift exchange, and then all of us packed off to midnight church. At the high water mark of our numbers, there were 22 of us spanning four generations. Christmas Day saw a late afternoon supper with my mother's side of the family, and there were 15 or 16 of us there, though my brother, sister and I were the only children. The differences were striking, with my dad's side giving deference to its older/oldest members (we kids had to be still and quiet), and my mom's side outwardly celebrating us children.
I can't remember when we stopped going to my dad's folks' for Christmas Eve. I do know that Christmas afternoon with my mom's side continued for a few years longer, and then moved to my parents' house, and that eventually my dad's folks started spending Christmas Eve and Day with us. Generations grow and shrink and grow again. We never had cousins on my mom's side. I had five cousins on my dad's side. Four remain alive. I don't know my cousins' children. I can't even name all of them. I'm not even sure how many there are. One of my dad's sisters passed away, but her husband survives. My dad's other sister is in her 90s, but her husband died. My dad has mostly disappeared inside of himself in the memory care unit of a nursing home. Both my brother and sister have three kids of their own. My oldest is 24 and my brother's youngest is... 13? 14? So a span of 10 or so years for those kids. On my mom's side only one older man remains. We call him "Uncle." It's a long story, but he's a few years younger than my mother, and actually her first cousin.
I'm prone to occasional, passing sadness during the Holidays, now. It's not that I'm not grateful and enjoy things as they are, but like everyone else who's increasingly aware of the passing of time, I can count the losses, and it gives me pause.
Doesn't help that on my side of the family the various branches have never been close; I have a sister I see once a year or so and my other relatives I don’t see from one year to the next. I have cousins once removed in Blackburn somewhere who I have never met. My parents are gone; my grandparents have all been dead for over 30 years and I have only one surviving uncle. I don't know if that would have been normal a few generations ago, barring some scandal and resulting estrangement.
So most of the people I'm likely to see at Christmas are my wife's relatives, so they're not the people I know from Christmas long past, which rather throws things into sharp relief.
Trees are up. Lights in the front window are up. Got a bit more to do. Meat for Christmas dinner is ordered but I have to decide on some canapés as starters.
Had a sad moment looking around the Christmas Tat in the shops yesterday. It always reminds me of Christmases long ago and when I think of the people in those long ago and not so long ago Christmases I realise that what many of them have in common is that they are no longer alive.
There was no wider family involved in Christmas when I was a child. When I was very young my brothers (10 and 12 years older than I) were around at home but as I got older they weren't so it was just me and my mum and dad. We ate at lunchtime, in the afternoon read the books we'd all given each other as gifts, watched the queen's speech (known in our house as the Queer Old Dean) at 3pm and ate turkey and ham sandwiches for tea. My mum then plonked the bowl of fruit and the Christmas cake on the table and sat down. I always remember the sound of that plonk which said, "I'm done with food for the day and tomorrow it's cold meat and bubble'n'squeak, which is an easy meal that I'll actually enjoy."
We went back to my mum's for Christmas when we were first married but after the first year there with our baby daughter it was clear it was too much for my mum and ever since we've had Christmas in our own home. One year my mum came to us; another year it was my father-in-law and his second wife.
Parents and brothers are all dead now .
Over the years we've developed our own traditions, one of the nicest being eating our meal early evening. Everyone mucks in to set the table and help and we drink something fizzy and get rather silly and giggly. After the meal we clear up and then sit down in front of the TV to eat Christmas pudding and chocolate.
One year it was just the two of us for the meal and it was miserable. I vowed Never Again.
This year we have our son and his fiancé with us and will be going over to see our daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter for a few hours on Christmas morning.
ETA - hugs to those missing special people at this time of year.
There was no wider family involved in Christmas when I was a child. When I was very young my brothers (10 and 12 years older than I) were around at home but as I got older they weren't so it was just me and my mum and dad. We ate at lunchtime, in the afternoon read the books we'd all given each other as gifts, watched the queen's speech (known in our house as the Queer Old Dean) at 3pm and ate turkey and ham sandwiches for tea. My mum then plonked the bowl of fruit and the Christmas cake on the table and sat down. I always remember the sound of that plonk which said, "I'm done with food for the day and tomorrow it's cold meat and bubble'n'squeak, which is an easy meal that I'll actually enjoy."
We went back to my mum's for Christmas when we were first married but after the first year there with our baby daughter it was clear it was too much for my mum and ever since we've had Christmas in our own home. One year my mum came to us; another year it was my father-in-law and his second wife.
Parents and brothers are all dead now .
Over the years we've developed our own traditions, one of the nicest being eating our meal early evening. Everyone mucks in to set the table and help and we drink something fizzy and get rather silly and giggly. After the meal we clear up and then sit down in front of the TV to eat Christmas pudding and chocolate.
One year it was just the two of us for the meal and it was miserable. I vowed Never Again.
This year we have our son and his fiancé with us and will be going over to see our daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter for a few hours on Christmas morning.
ETA - hugs to those missing special people at this time of year.
We go to friends on Christmas Day. There's a small online wine tasting at about 1 o'clock. This year we've decided, instead of trying to bring on the whole nine yards bird+stuffing+sides to do a succession of small plates, so soup, then pate, stir fry prawns, stuffed chicken thighs, interesting veg, cheeses, pudding.
Very grateful to Muslim taxi drivers getting us there and back.
Mrs RR made me get the candle bridges (menorahs?) down from the loft. Praise be that (a) I found them and (b) they still work! Now I have to find the extension leads. These are not to be found except by prayer and fasting. For me, the stresstive season has started.
OMG, you guys have menorahs?
I'm not sure that RR's candle-bridges are what I think of as a menorah; if they're like mine, they're something like this.
We go to friends on Christmas Day. There's a small online wine tasting at about 1 o'clock. This year we've decided, instead of trying to bring on the whole nine yards bird+stuffing+sides to do a succession of small plates, so soup, then pate, stir fry prawns, stuffed chicken thighs, interesting veg, cheeses, pudding.
Very grateful to Muslim taxi drivers getting us there and back.
For many years we also went to friends on Christmas Day at midday, for mulled wine and festive snacks - pigs in blankets, mini mince pies and the like. The friends then always had a huge family crowd for Christmas dinner; how they had room for it after all the nibbles I can't think.
In fact, this was why we moved our meal to the evening - it was very hard to get the Nenlets to stop eating the lunchtime things! We also found it freed up the morning for presents and gave us all something to look forward to in the evening.
Once a month our church does a meal for everyone after the morning service and the December one is Christmas Dinner In A Bun - a large bread roll filled with turkey, pig in blanket, stuffing and cranberry sauce - which is a good way of doing it for a large crowd. The most we've ever had for our Christmas meal is six.
Mrs RR made me get the candle bridges (menorahs?) down from the loft. Praise be that (a) I found them and (b) they still work! Now I have to find the extension leads. These are not to be found except by prayer and fasting. For me, the stresstive season has started.
OMG, you guys have menorahs?
I'm not sure that RR's candle-bridges are what I think of as a menorah; if they're like mine, they're something like this.
This is so. But still ....
Mrs RR is ploughing thru the Xmas cards. 'Dearest', she says, 'please sign this'. Which I do, whilst exclaiming, 'Who on earth are are they?' 'Oh, Mrs RR replies, 'We met them on holiday forty years ago'.
It seems a common rule in humankind that the task of writing the Christmas cards falls to the female. It has always been so in our household too, and the task awaits me this week. I have assembled in a pile the cards, address book, stamps and the list of who we sent to last year, which will be reduced by one this year as my last remaining aunt died in the summer . That's as far as I've got.
It is not really too onerous - over the past few years I have whittled our list right down, but as they are mostly people we don't keep much in touch with at any other time (but who matter very much to us) each card requires a few lines of Nen Family News. Most years Mr Nen mutters about compiling one of those round robin letters but he never gets round to it and I'm certainly not going to take on the task .
I've managed to fend off something I was going to be doing tomorrow so that has freed up the week a bit. I'm hopeful of getting the cards done and some stocking fillers purchased and the decorations up before Friday.
Funny you should say that, Nen, as I'm the main card writer in our household. I try to have a card every year with one of my own photos on - this year I was out in the garden when we *finally* had a frost snapping away so that I had something I could use!
One of the joys of my current situation is that I've had time this year to get the things done and sent. How long it will go on for I don't know as they are getting bloody expensive to send, and a lot of friends have given up sending them.
I have made a start on ours - and yes, it is the job of the woman of the house
Mr RoS has an active social life, and gets many cards, but rarely knows who they are from, even though they are put into his hand by the sender. I do not write cards to those I do not know, but give him a list and a pile of cards leftover when the others are done. He generally does nothing about them.
I rarely write anything over than our names in the cards we send. I used to, but for some years now there hasn't been anything to say, except the latest ailments one or other of us has acquired. This year guilt made me consider adding messages, but all I could think of was "Well, we are not dead yet". I decided that would not be a good idea.
I was going to cull our Christmas card list (I post 40+) but the early arrivals have been from people who would probably have been omitted this year.
I have made a start on ours - and yes, it is the job of the woman of the house
Mr RoS has an active social life, and gets many cards, but rarely knows who they are from, even though they are put into his hand by the sender. I do not write cards to those I do not know, but give him a list and a pile of cards leftover when the others are done. He generally does nothing about them.
I rarely write anything over than our names in the cards we send. I used to, but for some years now there hasn't been anything to say, except the latest ailments one or other of us has acquired. This year guilt made me consider adding messages, but all I could think of was "Well, we are not dead yet". I decided that would not be a good idea.
I was going to cull our Christmas card list (I post 40+) but the early arrivals have been from people who would probably have been omitted this year.
Always wise to leave the card sending fairly late so you don't have to do another load when the people you left off this year send you one.
Here in the US there have evolved a couple of different takes on "Christmas Cards." One is a photo card -- some posed snapshot of one's immediate family, often in matching clothing (everyone in khaki pants and a light blue or white shirt), or the seemingly ubiquitous snap taken during sunset at the beach (still in matching outfits). The other is a Christmas Letter, usually without a photo, which is generally a summary of the previous calendar year with updates on what each family member has done or achieved during that time. "Jimmy earned a spot on his age group's travel soccer team, and now we're driving all over the place for weekend tournaments... Susan graduated from Lovely College back in May and has begun graduate school at Such-&-Such University (it's a very competitive program)..." I tend to enjoy the letters more. Mrs. The_Riv and I plan to share the duty of sending out Christmas Cards during Christmastide. I don't think we've sent anything since before Covid.
I don’t send hardly any Christmas cards, usually just cards through the doors of the 3 neighbours who put ones through our door (always a good policy to get on with the neighbours).
Here in the US there have evolved a couple of different takes on "Christmas Cards." One is a photo card -- some posed snapshot of one's immediate family, often in matching clothing (everyone in khaki pants and a light blue or white shirt), or the seemingly ubiquitous snap taken during sunset at the beach (still in matching outfits). The other is a Christmas Letter, usually without a photo, which is generally a summary of the previous calendar year with updates on what each family member has done or achieved during that time. "Jimmy earned a spot on his age group's travel soccer team, and now we're driving all over the place for weekend tournaments... Susan graduated from Lovely College back in May and has begun graduate school at Such-&-Such University (it's a very competitive program)..." I tend to enjoy the letters more. Mrs. The_Riv and I plan to share the duty of sending out Christmas Cards during Christmastide. I don't think we've sent anything since before Covid.
I'm half'nhalf (British/ American) and the cousin I'm closest to in the US always sends a photo card of the family. I stopped mailing cards to family in the US 12 years ago when my husband and I went to live and work in Kenya. I now send an e-card instead.
Funny you should say that, Nen, as I'm the main card writer in our household. I try to have a card every year with one of my own photos on - this year I was out in the garden when we *finally* had a frost snapping away so that I had something I could use!
Great to hear of men like you and @Nick Tamen who buck the trend! And your cards must be a delight to receive. We have an amateur artist friend who for a few years sent a card of some of her artwork, one year it was a picture of a mother and baby based on her painting of her own daughter and grandchild . She and her husband are a fair bit older than us and last time we saw them she wasn't at all well so I don't suppose she'll be up to doing such things again.
I don't send cards to neighbours or local friends that I see on a regular basis and some of them now no longer send to us, and some still do.
Unless it's someone very unexpected or I feel it's important to reciprocate I don't send to people who are not on my list who send us one.
Here in the US there have evolved a couple of different takes on "Christmas Cards." One is a photo card -- some posed snapshot of one's immediate family, often in matching clothing (everyone in khaki pants and a light blue or white shirt), or the seemingly ubiquitous snap taken during sunset at the beach (still in matching outfits). The other is a Christmas Letter, usually without a photo, which is generally a summary of the previous calendar year with updates on what each family member has done or achieved during that time.
Then there’s the hybrid—picture(s) on one side of the card, with a short update on everyone/summary of the year on the other side. That style is the best of both worlds without the worst of both worlds.
(BTW, no coordinated outfits on ours, and we use both posed and unposed pictures.)
I am normally alone on Christmas Day. There are various people I call or who call me, and they do not all have my cell phone number. Having just seen the family at Thanksgiving, this does not bother me much.
As well as Christmas cards, there is of course the curse of the Christmas letter. Aaaaarrgh .... the horror!
We did a fake one one year full of unlikely achievements and almost weekly foreign holidays swimming in the Red Sea and building entire villages in Ethiopia.
To me there's always a weird sense of quasi-connection via Christmas cards/letters. A list of people who haven't reached out for almost 12 months suddenly appear in your mailbox to tell you about a year's worth of random things, none of which were important enough to tell you about at the time. Or, is it that you weren't quite important enough to share with at the time? Both? Anyway, it strikes me as more odd than anything. *Lovely matching blue jean shorts & crisp white t-shirts, though, Laverne.*
One of the saddest things I have seen this Christmas was a newspaper article reporting that the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation has advised parents that lottery tickets are unsuitable Christmas presents for children. Good grief - people have to be told that?
It is at this time of the year that the back pew in each of our churches becomes the mail exchange, as parishioners exchange Christmas cards. Many of those we receive are either supporting church charities or are attractive handmade items. St Hallmark doesn't get a look in!
Comments
OMG, you guys have menorahs? I’ve just ordered a battery operated one, since the cats make me nervous of lighting any candles…
I should put out my Mensch on a bench this year!
(I’m Jewish by blood on my mother side and since becoming a Christian (wasn’t raised in any religion) I’ve gotten much more interested in my ancestry.)
And I also enjoy hearing all the wonderful things people are up to here.
Am I the only one who thinks the story of The Nutcracker is really weird? At least, that is, to the degree there is a story? Any semblance of a plot seems to be abandoned in the second act.
All ballets have weird stories. Fact.
True, but The Nutcracker is weird even accounting for a baseline of general weirdness. Herr Drosselmeyer is downright creepy; I wouldn’t want him anywhere near my children, much less make him godfather to my daughter.
Arkland the Drear is being brightened up by festive lights on several Arks - far more than last year! - although it's still rather wet and windy here. I haven't spotted any Holy Penguins (or Dinosaurs) yet.
Very old days, but we don't have fossils (yet?) of penguin ancestors that could fly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin#Evolution
Well, he could repent... doesn't seem like the sort of storyline we usually get from Wallace and Gromit, though.
I set up my knitted Nativity set yesterday. The Wise Men are on their way on the top of the bookcase, accompanied by a Triceratops.
Had a sad moment looking around the Christmas Tat in the shops yesterday. It always reminds me of Christmases long ago and when I think of the people in those long ago and not so long ago Christmases I realise that what many of them have in common is that they are no longer alive.
Today's Expotition to Tesco was OK, but only because the Nice Ladies on the self-service tills did the work for me IYSWIM. All the check-outs were so busy that I'd probably still be queuing now...
I'd forgotten that not only is it Christmas tomorrow (seemingly), but that Storm Darragh had kept people in at the weekend, causing them to run out of bread, milk, and loo rolls.
Well, we do, but they're not exclusively the ancestors of penguins. And to be fair, we never know we've got an actual ancestor - we can only say we have a specimen very like what we would hypothesise the ancestor of a given group would look like. Acanthostega *could* be ancestral to later amphibians, but it's more likely it went extinct and a closely related genus or family we don't have fossils of actually won the genetic lottery of life.
Gathering people seems to be harder today than I think I remember from years ago. When I was young, we went every Christmas Eve to my paternal grandparents'. There was a sit-down diner of Slovak fare, a gift exchange, and then all of us packed off to midnight church. At the high water mark of our numbers, there were 22 of us spanning four generations. Christmas Day saw a late afternoon supper with my mother's side of the family, and there were 15 or 16 of us there, though my brother, sister and I were the only children. The differences were striking, with my dad's side giving deference to its older/oldest members (we kids had to be still and quiet), and my mom's side outwardly celebrating us children.
I can't remember when we stopped going to my dad's folks' for Christmas Eve. I do know that Christmas afternoon with my mom's side continued for a few years longer, and then moved to my parents' house, and that eventually my dad's folks started spending Christmas Eve and Day with us. Generations grow and shrink and grow again. We never had cousins on my mom's side. I had five cousins on my dad's side. Four remain alive. I don't know my cousins' children. I can't even name all of them. I'm not even sure how many there are. One of my dad's sisters passed away, but her husband survives. My dad's other sister is in her 90s, but her husband died. My dad has mostly disappeared inside of himself in the memory care unit of a nursing home. Both my brother and sister have three kids of their own. My oldest is 24 and my brother's youngest is... 13? 14? So a span of 10 or so years for those kids. On my mom's side only one older man remains. We call him "Uncle." It's a long story, but he's a few years younger than my mother, and actually her first cousin.
I'm prone to occasional, passing sadness during the Holidays, now. It's not that I'm not grateful and enjoy things as they are, but like everyone else who's increasingly aware of the passing of time, I can count the losses, and it gives me pause.
So most of the people I'm likely to see at Christmas are my wife's relatives, so they're not the people I know from Christmas long past, which rather throws things into sharp relief.
Sending hugs.
I miss Cubby so much.
We went back to my mum's for Christmas when we were first married but after the first year there with our baby daughter it was clear it was too much for my mum and ever since we've had Christmas in our own home. One year my mum came to us; another year it was my father-in-law and his second wife.
Parents and brothers are all dead now
Over the years we've developed our own traditions, one of the nicest being eating our meal early evening. Everyone mucks in to set the table and help and we drink something fizzy and get rather silly and giggly. After the meal we clear up and then sit down in front of the TV to eat Christmas pudding and chocolate.
One year it was just the two of us for the meal and it was miserable. I vowed Never Again.
This year we have our son and his fiancé with us and will be going over to see our daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter for a few hours on Christmas morning.
ETA - hugs to those missing special people at this time of year.
❤️❤️❤️🕯🕯🕯
Very grateful to Muslim taxi drivers getting us there and back.
I'm not sure that RR's candle-bridges are what I think of as a menorah; if they're like mine, they're something like this.
For many years we also went to friends on Christmas Day at midday, for mulled wine and festive snacks - pigs in blankets, mini mince pies and the like. The friends then always had a huge family crowd for Christmas dinner; how they had room for it after all the nibbles I can't think.
In fact, this was why we moved our meal to the evening - it was very hard to get the Nenlets to stop eating the lunchtime things! We also found it freed up the morning for presents and gave us all something to look forward to in the evening.
Once a month our church does a meal for everyone after the morning service and the December one is Christmas Dinner In A Bun - a large bread roll filled with turkey, pig in blanket, stuffing and cranberry sauce - which is a good way of doing it for a large crowd. The most we've ever had for our Christmas meal is six.
Mrs RR is ploughing thru the Xmas cards. 'Dearest', she says, 'please sign this'. Which I do, whilst exclaiming, 'Who on earth are are they?' 'Oh, Mrs RR replies, 'We met them on holiday forty years ago'.
It is not really too onerous - over the past few years I have whittled our list right down, but as they are mostly people we don't keep much in touch with at any other time (but who matter very much to us) each card requires a few lines of Nen Family News. Most years Mr Nen mutters about compiling one of those round robin letters but he never gets round to it and I'm certainly not going to take on the task
I've managed to fend off something I was going to be doing tomorrow so that has freed up the week a bit. I'm hopeful of getting the cards done and some stocking fillers purchased and the decorations up before Friday.
One of the joys of my current situation is that I've had time this year to get the things done and sent. How long it will go on for I don't know as they are getting bloody expensive to send, and a lot of friends have given up sending them.
Mr RoS has an active social life, and gets many cards, but rarely knows who they are from, even though they are put into his hand by the sender. I do not write cards to those I do not know, but give him a list and a pile of cards leftover when the others are done. He generally does nothing about them.
I rarely write anything over than our names in the cards we send. I used to, but for some years now there hasn't been anything to say, except the latest ailments one or other of us has acquired. This year guilt made me consider adding messages, but all I could think of was "Well, we are not dead yet". I decided that would not be a good idea.
I was going to cull our Christmas card list (I post 40+) but the early arrivals have been from people who would probably have been omitted this year.
Always wise to leave the card sending fairly late so you don't have to do another load when the people you left off this year send you one.
Our cards have only had us on the front once
I'm half'nhalf (British/ American) and the cousin I'm closest to in the US always sends a photo card of the family. I stopped mailing cards to family in the US 12 years ago when my husband and I went to live and work in Kenya. I now send an e-card instead.
Great to hear of men like you and @Nick Tamen who buck the trend! And your cards must be a delight to receive. We have an amateur artist friend who for a few years sent a card of some of her artwork, one year it was a picture of a mother and baby based on her painting of her own daughter and grandchild
I don't send cards to neighbours or local friends that I see on a regular basis and some of them now no longer send to us, and some still do.
Unless it's someone very unexpected or I feel it's important to reciprocate I don't send to people who are not on my list who send us one.
(BTW, no coordinated outfits on ours, and we use both posed and unposed pictures.)
For a great, hilarious take on the Christmas Letter, try David Sedaris’s “Season’s Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!”. Julia Sweeney’s fantastic reading of it can be heard here.
We did a fake one one year full of unlikely achievements and almost weekly foreign holidays swimming in the Red Sea and building entire villages in Ethiopia.
We send cards because we like receiving cards...
I have a number of old friends that I hear from once a year at Christmas. I like getting their news, and think fondly of them when I hear it.