TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

The first Christmas card of the season usually arrives in the mail at the beginning of December, announcing its difference from the rest of the mail with a Christmas stamp, or a red envelope, or maybe a handwritten address. We savor every card we get. Christmas cards are delicious little slices of life that we serve each other, as delectable as peppermint mochas and sugarplums, filling us with anticipation as the mailbox is checked each countdown day until Christmas.

But where are all the cards this year?

In years past, each day's mail brought at least one card from a loved one or acquaintance. Of course, the mail in general has been getting sparser. This year's Christmas cards are trickling in at the slowest rate yet. I don't think it's because we have become less popular among our friends. Maybe, like everything else that is currently bad, it's the economy. But I think it has more to do with the changing ways in which we communicate. As the cards we hang across the kitchen dwindle, we read in the news that the U.S. Postal Service is in a fiscal crisis, scaling back, cutting services, closing facilities. There's a definite connection.

Perhaps the declining number of Christmas cards in the mail is one more thing I can blame on Facebook. When we are in virtual touch every single day with just about everybody we've ever known, what need is there to reach out and remember loved ones with a Christmas card? Facebook sometimes reads like a yearlong annoying Christmas letter, anyway. Who needs to fill others in on our fantastic lives and accomplished children when that's what we do via Facebook all the time? In the midst of email, smart phones, texting, and online social networking, the Christmas card may very well be on its way to extinction.

But not on our watch. My husband and I have made a vow to continue making our Christmas cards by hand until one of us is dead. We made our first card 32 Christmases ago, when we newlyweds thought it would be funny to send out a card with a photo of us padded and disguised as a disgruntled middle-aged couple. We unwittingly began a tradition that continues to this day, when we no longer need the disguises, of making Christmas cards with eccentric, semi-autobiographical photos. In 1980 we mailed 25 cards. I still remember the phone call from my mother, inquiring tentatively, "Um, did that card go to ALL our relatives?" Now the relatives are used to us. This year we're making 140 cards, which is what happens when the family grows and adds friends to the list.

Our cards usually aren't mailed until after the last Sunday of Advent has passed. Which is to say: They are often late. We think about our card all year, but the execution likely comes late in December. I can offer the excuse that our cards are labors of love, but it's not like we don't know Christmas is coming. It's just become a more logistically complicated puzzle to get all of us in one place and ready to be photographed at the same time.

Over the years friends have said that they aren't going to send Christmas cards anymore, because it's an empty gesture, an expensive nod to commercialism. And with advances in technology, some cards have become impersonal: the preprinted greetings, postage machine imprints, and computer labels make you wonder if a human being ever touched a card before it was sent. But I know that, even as we have changed to address labels rather than addressing by hand, I spend a moment in communion with each person whose name is on the card I am folding or gluing or stamping, remembering what I love about that person, or reflecting on how that person is connected to our family. It's like touching that person in spirit, however fleetingly. Making the cards, as much as I complain about the late nights involved, is one of the Christmas traditions I love best.

I'll continue to collect the mail every day with the irrational hope for Christmas cards, even as more holiday greetings show up in my email inbox. Someday they may all come with a click of the send-all button. Someday an explanation of the USPS may follow a drawing of the Pony Express in history books. Someday, as our powers of communication evolve, the Christmas card may be the dinosaur of the season. I just hope Someday takes a long time to arrive.

Got to go now, and help put the finishing touches on 140 cards, before depositing them in a big blue box at an exotic place called the post office.

These are the opinions of Valerie Schultz, not necessarily those of The Californian. Email her at vschultz22@gmail.com