Oh, my ~ How I wait for Christmas each year, not for the tree or the presents, but to hear from people I love and don’t see very often ~ wanting to connect with each one once again.

All over again I remember former friendships, good times, laughter, cooking dinners together, lunches out, wine, parties, and just plain fun watching our children cavort together as we shared coffee and ‘Mom’ stories. And how I adored seeing these kids as toddlers, beginning to grow older.

Later, as the kids grew older and wiser, we parents shared teenaged stories, our chats together became more serious, more meaningful, people moved, lives changed, but always we kept in touch at least at Christmas.

In between the years, I’d think of friends, laugh about photos taken when we were younger, thinner, dare I say better looking? Because now, actually, I think we’re all becoming really beautiful people. E-mail to me now is even more special, because now I even get to see grandkids, in-between holidays, which makes it fun to chat back and forth every single day.

Hearing from family members out of town (out-of-town-to-me, that is, even if they’ve never moved from where they were born) is heart warming, reminding me all over again of places I’ve loved living, and people I’ve loved growing up with. I sit down immediately, rip open the envelopes and read the cards and letters again and again, loving pictures of the kids, even the pets. If they include pictures of themselves, that’s the cherry on top for me. I love seeing them all!

Once I had a friend who told me she was so overwhelmed at Christmas that she couldn’t even consider taking the time to open the Christmas cards they received then, but would collect them and later in the winter, sometime in January, she and her husband would sit down to read their cards together. My mind spun out of control. Was she serious? The thing I’d waited for the whole long year? It felt to me like telling Santa you didn’t have time for him until January, or maybe even February or March.

Of course I realize ‘to each his own’ and it’s their life. I just want to tell them it’s so WRONG. For me, in January, February and March I’m still reading over holiday letters, and save them from year to year. There are friends of mine who hate Christmas letters, a tough pill for me to swallow. I, of course, know in my heart that they, too, are just WRONG about it all, but oblige and do not send them my Christmas letter. It always makes me feel a bit sad, and I’m not sure why.

At any rate, I am excited that another Christmas season is upon us, and I eagerly check the mailbox each day for holiday cards, notes, family letters and pictures. I know we’re all busy. Every single one of us. But it’s still nice to know people still think of us and our little families, as we do theirs ~ reaching out across the miles, as they say. If I didn’t know better I’d think I should have gone to work for Hallmark years ago. Why didn’t I ever think of that?