- A Gathering of Christmas Cards
Each day, now, our mail brings another Christmas card or two. After we admire them and read their messages, they are placed atop the piano in the living room. As the space fills up, they go into a large, nearby bowl and will be referred to again and again throughout the season.
The ritual of the Christmas cards always reminds me of my mother’s distant (4th or 5th) cousin, Rose Espy Glynn. Rose was a widow – a pretty, white-haired woman with a pink complexion and the kind of eyes that disappear into crinkles when she smiled. She ‘discovered’ Oysterville when she read my uncle Willard’s book, Oysterville, Roads to Grandpa’s Village, and she moved here from the east (Pennsylvania?) in the late 1970s.
Just in the nick of time for the W.D. Taylor house south of the church, Rose came to its rescue by purchasing and rehabbing it. She spent most of her time in the garden (“I’m not a housekeeper,” she told me) and volunteered at the Ocean Park Library. We saw a lot of Rose and included her in all the family activities that she would allow, but she drew the line at Christmas Eve.
“No,” she said. “That’s a time when I visit with all my loved ones who are far away.” Until she explained, I thought that she perhaps spent the evening on the telephone…but, no. “I don’t open any of my Christmas cards when they come in,” she said. “I save them for Christmas Eve and spend the evening by the fire opening them and ‘hearing’ from my friends and family. I’ve done that every year since I’ve been alone.”
What a lovely tradition! It put a whole new light on those ‘Christmas letters’ that are included in so many cards and that we all seem to have mixed feelings about – especially when it comes to writing them. In the hurry-scurry of getting ready for the holidays we, too, often wait until later to read the long messages; somehow, we have ‘permission’ from Rose to do that.
What a lovely story and idea! I love Cousin Rose without ever having laid eyes on her. I don’t care what you say, some of the interesting people who mention here would make wonderful characters in a novel!