by Cary Farrell January 25, 2013 Holiday cards will filled our mailboxes last month from family and friends and that might be the only time we hear from them. Some cards are preprinted and signed and some are mini books that give a run down of the past year with pictures! I must admit that I do enjoy receiving these connections from family and friends and since I got married I have written a mini book with pictures to stay connected with my family and friends. If I am honest, I have mainly written these letters as a yearly journal for my children and I am grateful that I have been able to keep it up for 25 years now. I have a notebook with these letters and the yearly family picture as a journal of our family's life. I have sent this letter out to family and friends as a way to stay connected and I enjoy reading the yearly letters from others. Time gets away from us and it is nice to have this yearly tradition to keep us minimally connected. Over the years I have used Christmas card wreaths to display these cards, hung them over ribbon or collected them in a basket on the table to enjoy during meal times. I keep the envelopes long enough to be sure I have current addresses in my address list. Most of us have our own way of handling the cards we receive during the holiday. The challenge comes after Christmas when we are packing up the holiday decorations. What do we do with the Christmas cards now? Let me answer that by asking what you would do if instead of a Christmas card you got a phone call or visit from someone on your Christmas card list? Would you grab the tape recorder or video camera to record this moment in time to relive later? Even if you did record it, the chance of you actually taking the time to watch or listen to it would be rare. Why do we see Christmas cards or letters any differently? My theory is that Hallmark has trained us well ! ;) Many of us feel obligated or attached to these cards and have boxes, bags and piles of these cards stashed in various places. Many of my clients fight for these stashes when we find them but when I ask how often they look at the old cards, they have to honestly answer never! If I challenge them to look through a small pile of them they realize that there isn't anything there that they would take the time to look at and will usually let the pile go. I try to remind my clients that each card is a hug to enjoy in the moment and no one expects you to keep it forever. Even those of us who write mini books don't expect you to keep them. That is our job. I keep a copy of our family letter as a journal for our family but I don't expect anyone else to keep a copy. If you do send out cards then you might have a reason to keep the cards and letters until the following year as a reminder of who is staying connected and what happened in their lives that you might want to add a personal note about on next years letter. At that point I throw the cards and letters away as I look forward to getting their new card. If the cards contain a picture you can do the same thing, keep the picture for the year to compare it to the new one but then throw it away. Unless you feel called to be the family historian who puts all the family pictures in an album, let each family be responsible for keeping a record of their own family and you just enjoy the picture for the short time. If you have a hard time letting these cards and letters go, remember that at some point your will be leaving a huge bin of old cards for someone else to go through. I have sat with clients while they looked through their deceased families cards most from people they don't even know. What an unnecessary burden to place on your family. Enjoy the cards ( hugs) for a reasonable time and then release the tangible evidence of the hug and look forward to the next one! If you are an artistic person and want to repurpose the cards, be realistic about only keeping the amount of cards that you can truly use. Feel blessed by each hug (card or letter) you receive this year but don't feel the burden to keep it forever!