Christmas Card Memories

There's a song, first sung by Gentleman Jim (Jm Reeves) that has been the favourite in most English speaking homes in Goa, Shillong, and Calcutta. It's called "Memory of an old Christmas Card".

 [Indian Postage Stamps on Christmas]

Christmas Cards are definitely among my most enduring memories of the Holiday Season. The Season that stretches from the third week of November till the 6th of January.

In the days when there were 'book post' rates of 50 paise per card, and the postman still pedalled up faithfully to your front door, sending and receiving Greeting Cards for Christmas and the New Year was by far one of the most exciting tasks of the season.

Every card received would be displayed in living rooms, strung up on twine. Sometimes the twine and the cards ran around the entire room, and envious guests would go around admiring them.

When we were teenagers, and letter-writing and stamp collection were respectable hobbies that were passionately followed by the old and young, what joy Christmas Season brought!

We'd troop down to the card shops looking for the appropriate cards to send for Christmas and the New Year - traditional ones, naughty ones, cute ones, and of course the romantic ones to send to people near and far.

The Christmas Card, to many of us, was the way we told our 'long lost' friends, classmates, and relatives that we still remembered them at this wonderful time of the year.

We wrote inside each card neatly, trying out our calligraphy, and we sat up for hours, burning the midnight oil.

I remember going down to the post office to make sure that we got the special stamps from the philately counter, and not the ordinary postage stamps.

And oh, the sheer ecstasy of receiving these envelopes filled with warmth and love, often discovered slipped under the door, with the postman playing a sort of  Santa Claus.

Today, the bookstore around the corner keeps a limited amount of cards...the SMS has killed the card industry, the shopkeeper lamented.

Sadly, the cards received today are few. The postman is a stranger. 

An SMS can never ever be a substitute for a gift of love that you open up and hold in your hands, colourful, catchy, with a verse chosen specially for you... a gift of love that you can take out of an old shoebox a quarter of a century from now ... and you will relive moments and see the faces and feel the warmth of years gone by flooding your cold heart till your eyes feel moist.

No SMS my friends, can ever match up to the good old Christmas Card! 

Tonight, I'm listening to the sounds of forgotten music, as I leaf through a hundred memories.

In the quiet of the night, I'm looking through your old, precious, Christmas cards, and I'm breathing a silent and heartfelt 'Thankyou'  for your having been a part of my life's journey.

I hold your love in my hand in these old Christmas Cards.