It’s about this time of year that retailers start unloading their inventory of decorations for the upcoming holidays. As you’re passing by the bulbs and the lights, you will inevitably come to an aisle reserved for boxes of holiday cards.
No matter what religious affiliation you have, there is probably a card that will suit your needs. There are even cards for people with no affiliation who just want to wish someone a happy season.
If there is a card for anyone, why then is it that the practice of sending holiday cards is vanishing?
I don’t know about you, but when I was a child, my parents got dozens of cards sent to them and they sent out armfuls. My mother did my Grandma’s shopping for her and always on the list in November was her request for a box or two of Christmas cards along with a book or two of stamps.
Back then, you could count on receiving a card from everyone you knew. If you didn’t receive a card from someone you expected one from, you had better pick up the phone and find out what you did to upset them because that’s the only reason other than illness or death that would prevent a card from being sent.
Christmas cards were serious business!
The truth is, writing is dying.
If we don’t do something now while there is a generation among us that can remember how to write cursive, it’s going to fade into non-existence while we trade it for type-written emails, e-cards and text messages.
Who among us remembers the old penmanship paper that we were given by our second-grade teacher’s to practice our cursive writing?
It was paper turned to landscape length and each line had a solid top and bottom with a dotted middle. Usually, it had letters already printed on it that were printed in dotted lines, and we had to trace them to practice.
Did you know that schools don’t even teach handwriting and penmanship anymore?
With the increased need for preparation time to get students to pass assessment testing, cursive writing has become something of a casualty.
School administrators feel that it isn’t necessary to teach handwriting when nothing gets written anymore anyway.
Children don’t send handwritten cards or letters. They send emails and text messages.
We used to groan when our teacher’s required our book report to be in cursive writing. These days, the protests come from second and third graders who are mandated to turn in their book reports typewritten.
What is going to happen to these children when they reach adulthood? Will they have to print their name to endorse their paychecks?
I do my part to keep handwriting alive.
I still send Christmas cards to everyone I know, and I don’t send the ones that are custom printed. I sign each one and include a small hand written verse. I don’t use printed labels, and I hand address my envelopes. I still spend rainy Saturdays curled up on a sofa with pen and paper handwriting poetry, and I still hand write my grocery list rather than print it out from the computer.
Despite all that, when I enrolled at SCC this semester, I took my very first online course.
Many of you know that to participate well in online courses, you have to submit posts for discussion.
The very first time I went to do this, I made what I considered to be a joke and immediately proceeded to type, “LOL.” I stopped myself then and sat there looking at the computer screen, truly befuddled.
I wanted to make light of what I was saying and I wanted to make them laugh. How then, was I supposed to indicate it was meant to be funny without directing them to laugh?
My point being, if someone like myself who treasures the magic and mystique of handwriting as I do can lose the ability to communicate with the old-fashioned, written, English language, what hope do today’s kids have?
Do the future a favor, resolve to send out at least a couple physical Christmas cards this year.
If you have kids, make sure they help you so they see it’s important.
Go further and vow to include a handwritten, personal message in each of them.
If you do, there is a solid chance the folks you send them to will reciprocate.
It’s not going to create peace on Earth or solve world hunger, but it might be a step in saving a dying art.