Jen's Genealogy Pages

My parents always sent Christmas cards and I remember being quite excited when we received one. I still like receiving them, though they are much less common than they used to be. I was always particularly interested in those that came from ‘away’ and tended to hope for a stamp or two from somewhere outside Canada.

For quite some time my mother had a large tin can with the ends cut out. (And, in talking to my mother this evening, I discovered that the can was actually originally her mother’s! Almost an heirloom…) It was wrapped in red yarn looped vertically up and down around the can. You put the cards through so that a piece of yarn went down the centre-fold of the card. That way you could flip through and see the front of the cards as well as the writing inside. Today, I just arrange any cards we receive along the fireplace mantel. We don’t get quite as many as my parents did so there’s more than enough room.

Because I like to receive them, I still send cards out. And these days I enclose a picture of the children. I like the idea of a real card, as opposed to sending an email or similar. They certainly take more work, though!

I have a few old Christmas cards that were sent to me floating around somewhere but I don’t have any that were sent to generations previous to mine.