Juliatomiak.com Website Review

Every year, as I seek to shorten my list of Christmas to dos, and therefore limit my holiday exhaustion, I ponder The Christmas Card.  Is it worth coercing my people to pose for a picture?  And if yes, what should we wear?  Should I write a letter, or is a brief blurb on The Christmas Card takes a lot of energy: as*embling the family unit; enduring the grumbling; running between the tripod and the family huddle before the shutter timer goes off; designing the perfect photo card; choosing the perfect words.  And then there’s the mail merge  (I don’t print mailing labels enough; each year I must relearn the process) and the hours spent signing, stamping, sealing. Christmas would be simpler without The Card. I like to display my cards in the entrance to our dining room. But I love GETTING cards.  I can’t wait to see how families and friends have grown and changed over the year.  I lament that in many cases, communication has been reduced to this annual ritual, and yet I’m thankful to at least have that.  I devour the letters that come And so, every year,  I make the photo card and compose the letter.  I never use verse or acrostics (some people are very creative!), but write a family update, allowing one paragraph for each Tomiak.  I try to keep it real with snippets and quotes from our daily lives.  I avoid boasts and saccharine sweet sentiments. I hope to create something informative and entertaining. This year, as if they heard my doubts, a few friends and family have made the time to tell me how much they love and look forward to my letter.  I appreciate the fact that in this busy world, at this busy time, if people make the effort to complement you, they usually mean So The Christmas Card is a tradition I will keep.  Which of course leads to the Word Nerd question, how did the tradition of sending Way back in 1843, in Victorian England, a man named Henry Cole had a problem: too many friends.  The custom of sending a Christmas letter