JUST A THOUGHT: "City sidewalks,
busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style,
in the air, there's a feeling of Christmas…"--- 'Silver Bells'
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LOST ART: Thanks, but no thanks, to social media, the old practice of greeting people on important occasions has been made faster, also effortless. Heartless, too?
With the widespread popularity of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, sending messages of thanksgiving, condolences, even birthday and Christmas greetings, have become obsolete. It’s as if the practice came from another time and space.
The Bureau of Posts has acknowledged this, pointing to the dwindling sales of stamps everywhere. At one point, the agency had to launch a letter- writing contest among students to encourage them to bring back the art of sending posts by mail.
How terrible that young people have invented a name for that, snail mail. How terrible, too, that they have baptized us and our platform (newspapers and magazines) as traditional media.
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POST IT: These days, when people speak of posts, it is in reference to short notes written on the net for all the world to see, like, ignore, comment, or share. These features, unfortunately, don’t exist in regular mail.
The sudden drop in the volume of snail mail traffic worldwide explains the dying or lost art of sending out Christmas cards, or just any card for that matter.
In a bygone era, friends used to remember each other through greeting cards that depicted the symbols of Christmas: Saint Joseph, the Blessed Mother, the nativity scene, lantern, star.
Traffic by mail would build up starting in October as people looked forward to their first greeting card of the season.
Nowadays, one can count by the fingers the number of Christmas cards being sent and received. In a materialistic world, some people even scoff at the practice. They don’t seem to see the heart of the matter, the love and care one pours into picking, then writing on one such card.
The practice of sending Christmas cards is believed to have been started by Sir Henry Cole, a government employee in 1843 England. He is credited as the first person to ever send Christmas cards to friends and family.
Inspired by the establishment of a new Public Post Office in his town, Cole experimented by writing notes on sheets of paper. He asked a friend, John Horsley, to draw images of people caring for the poor in one panel and a family enjoying a large Christmas dinner on the other.
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KEEPING TRADITION: All isn’t lost.
Every year, without fail, for the past 50 years since we left high school, US-based Ramon B. de las Alas has been sending out Christmas cards to his classmates.
His cards, part of a vanishing breed in this age of high-tech social media, are simple yet full of thought. They carry no news about the sender, but in their own, thoughtful way, provide a link to his how-and-whereabouts.
They are also a manifestation of how Ramon, a staunch Catholic and traditionalist, faithfully spreads the Christmas spirit.
Ramon is astounded by the gush of connectivity generated by his yearly habit of sending out Christmas cards to friends, who neither write him back nor send him a Philippine-made greeting card. He couldn’t fathom how such a simple act of mailing cards by snail post has succeeded in cementing ties that bind among classmates, unseen and unheard from.
The funny thing is, we only hear from Ramon through his limited scribbling, and not much else, around Christmastime.
Yet, the ties that bind remain, after 50 years.