December 7th is Letter Writing Day. I remember writing several letters a week to family and friends. Long distance phone calls were a big expensive deal, only for special holidays and serious news.
Fewer people send Christmas cards these days and it's totally understandable-- the time and bother, plus cost of postage. A first class letter now is almost 60 cents-- kind of a shock when you buy a few of those little packets at once. I remember Mom picking out sheets of 4 cent Christmas stamps in the 1960's. She kept up an amazingly detailed address book. We mailed stacks of cards and we received just as many.
Mediocre writing comes easy for me (I do it daily!) but writing a good annual Christmas letter is hard. Those braggy old mimeographed letters (remember that smelly blue ink?) were fodder for jokes, and rightly so. But in fairness, it's hard to strike the balance between enough family news and overkill. Some people have it down to an art. Anyway, I enjoy reading all of them, and appreciate the time it took to write.
December 7 is Letter Writing Day. A good day to get the Christmas card mess moving off the dining table. Although it's a pretty mess. All those hand-addressed envelopes stacked up and ready to send makes me feel quite businesslike and efficient. Ha ha.
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