For over 40 years, I have made my own Christmas cards.  If I ever forget what I did when, I only need to refer to my stash of homemade cards to remind me.  At least in the first years, each was themed with a depiction what was happening in my life at the time.

While living on my own for the first time in my early twenties, like my mother before me, I took up the tradition of sending Christmas cards to friends and family.  “May your Christmas be all smiles” was my first homemade card.

The next year, “Baby’s first Christmas tree” (one of my favorites) was about, again, being on my own and owning a puppy for the first time.  Another of my favorites, “Tis the season to make folly” illustrates a bad fall I took skiing that year.  “From a mistletoe point of view” summed up a year or so of…well, dating (like the princess and the frog maybe?)! 

Then, after finding my prince and while working for the airlines, my card showed me coming home for the holidays parachuting from a plane into my back yard where, looking up to the sky, my husband and dog awaited my arrival.  When the two of us remodeled our first home, a small farmhouse, the card showed me sewing a “Sampler” of our home. 

Then we had children and I made a lot of cards about them.  One, a pen and ink drawing, shows our first born, my daughter, as a baby “Reaching for the stars”, yearning to have the bling on the top of the tree and then pulling it down to get that gosh darn star (she really didn’t do this but I did have visions of it happening)! 

Black and White and Color

The next year another pen and ink of her in her frilly Christmas finest rocking on her rocking horse.  Then, when my son came along three years later, there are black and white ink drawings. These are of my kids posing together when they were three and six. Another one of them a year or so older looking out the window for Santa and his reindeer. 

The “It must be  Christmas” card with the dog and cat next to each other shows how we tried adding a cat to our house of two adults, two kids and a dog. 

As my life became a little more hectic with family and work, I started to make cards from photographs.  One year I took a picture of a curtain I made of our cabin in the Adirondacks and turned the colorful applique into a black and white photo making it look like winter. 

Another year, I used a log cabin bird house  that I  never put outside for the birds but instead used it as one of my  “winter” decorations once the Christmas ones were put away.  I took a picture of the house sitting on our dining room table and, collaging a sky into the background, turned the piece into a card.   

A photo of the Christmas village I always set up with small houses lit from within by small light bulbs became a card and a photo of an especially nice-looking Christmas tree of ours – a lovely blue spruce – also became a card.

In the past five years or so, living in Florida during the holidays has thrown me for a little bit of a loop to get me into the spirit of the season.  It just isn’t the same without cold and snow (my experience for sixty-plus years).  I decided I wasn’t going to send Christmas cards anymore. 

But, when I didn’t send any, receiving them from friends and family made me feel guilty of not reciprocating and the guilt inspired me to get the ball rolling again.  Last year, because we were renting our friend’s home to be able to stay “up north” near family for the holidays, I didn’t have a way to make and send a card.  Instead, once I was in my Florida studio, I sent a “homemade” Valentines card to the usual Xmas suspects in the new year.  It was not a typical Valentine as I made a card from a print of the chalkboard kitchen sign I designed sending it along with the story about how I came to make it.

This year, I’m in Florida again and I was thinking of not sending a card as it was getting a little late to get it in the mail in time for people to receive before the big day.  But while looking for a photo for another project, I came across a picture of a small oil painting my mother had done back in 1944, a snowy night scene of a church.  Voila!  A perfect subject  for my 2021 card.  Thank you, mom!  You saved me. 

How about you?  Have you ever made and sent your own Christmas card?  How does the tradition  feel -to send a card every year or do you choose not to join into the annual practice?  I’d love to hear what you think.  Scroll down to the Comments section below  and let me know.