I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of Christmas. I struggle with the commercial grip the holiday has been in these past few years; the obligation to cook a lavish dinner for your family, the pressure of having to be 100% absolutely perfectly happy because everyone is supposed to be 100% absolutely perfectly happy, as well as the need to buy bigger and more expensive presents for your loved ones than you did the year before… it all tends to get on my nerves. I’ve been called a grump because of this more than once, but I just can’t help feeling like this.
Still, there’s one Christmas tradition I’ve always loved – the sending of holiday cards to friends and family. I think it ties in well with what Christmas traditionally stands for: showing kindness to the people around you and letting them know that you’re thinking of them. A few days ago I received a Christmas card that embodied this idea more than any of the other cards I’ve received this December or, indeed, the previous December.
The Christmas card itself was a humble affair. It was made of sturdy white paper and it carried a simple design of a pencil-drawn log cabin with a red door and a red chimney. Pencil-drawn snow was falling from the sky and onto the cabin’s roof. Underneath the drawing stood the words “Frohe Weihnachten” (Merry Christmas in German). Inside the card I found a short but sweet message from a dear friend. It ended with the words: “Did you check the envelop? I extra bought a car stamp!”
I hadn’t really looked at the envelop, but when I did, I saw that my friend had stuck a beautiful stamp showing a Porsche 911 onto its right top corner. The little piece of paper instantly made my heart melt. I know that, according to the big commercial rules of Christmas, it isn’t much to look at. The stamp isn’t big. It’s not flashy. It’s not expensive. But to me, it means the world. Christmas card sending is a bit of a dying tradition these days. If people still send out cards at all, they usually write the same standard message on all of them. And sometimes they forego the message altogether; they just write down their names and leave it with that.
But here I was holding the card of a friend who had taken the trouble to not just write me a card, but also to personalise it. Not because Christmas demands it from her or because it’s something that makes her hip or cool. No, she did it simply because she cared. That’s a bigger gift to me than even a real Porsche 911 would have been. Thanks ever so much, P.!
As for you, reader, please consider the above story my Christmas carol to you. Remind yourself that tonight and tomorrow are more about the tiny gestures than about the big gifts. I hope you’ll be able to drop your holiday stress and will simply have a MERRY CHRISTMAS.