It was a usual humdrum coffee break in the company snack shop. The only bright spot in the plain and all too familiar surroundings was a small and scrawny but brightly lit Christmas tree. As intended, it reminded everybody it was time to get into the spirit.
As for me, I didn’t mind all the rushing around and wondering what presents to buy for whom, or even the challenge of finding the time to get everything done before Christmas Eve.
It was writing the Christmas cards that got to me. They were nice to receive, but a chore to get ready to send. What we wrote had to sound special, maybe even exciting, and since we had yet to adopt the idea of sending a Christmas letter along with the card, there was only so much space on the card in which to scrunch all the news we wished to share plus our personal greeting.
The about sixty names on our list made for a lot of scribbling, licking, and stamp slapping. I knew I couldn’t evade my share of doing what it took to make it happen, a reality that prompted my brain to think of what we could do to make Christmas card sending that year a little more special.
Later that day, I was in the library looking up a reference when I happened to glance at the often used collection of phone books. They were from more than a hundred towns and cities throughout the U.S.
That’s when it hit me. Why send Christmas cards only to people we knew when we could and maybe even should share the holiday spirit with those we didn’t know.
Mentally grabbing a random number, I decided to go to the tenth page of every tenth directory and write down the tenth name and address listed on that page. After I did that ten times, we would send a card to each address. There wouldn’t be any handwritten messages, just our usual signatures.
Well, two days later and with more anxiety than I was willing to admit, I dropped the ten cards in the mail, all with First Class postage.
As the days ticked by, I was gratified that none of the cards were returned. That meant all had either been delivered or forwarded.
On the eighth day, however, we received a card from a Kentucky address to which we had sent one of the cards. With it was a note saying that even after a lot of thought, neither she nor her husband could remember ever knowing or even meeting us. That’s the reason that aside from wishing us a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, they also asked if we could please help them solve that mystery.
I immediately sent them a note explaining why they had received the card from us. In the end, however, they didn’t acknowledge my note nor did we ever hear from any of the other nine.
That’s when I realized that although we had been sincere with our message, surely some of the others had also been similarly puzzled. We could have easily included a note admitting that although we didn’t know them, we just wanted to spread the holiday cheer beyond the usual boundary.
Even if we did cause some head scratching by those attempting to remember us, I never regretted what we did. I still believe extending holiday wishes to others is a good idea even if you don’t know them.
That leads me to say here that whether you are a long time friend or someone I barely know or maybe don’t know at all, you are my Santa Claus. That’s because your gift to me is that you are reading this column, and for that, I sincerely thank you.
Here’s wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
