A Christmas Letter

Because it is the Christmas season, the thought of writing a Christmas letter came to mind. Not an electronic version, but one written by hand with pen and paper. Hardy and I discussed it. Most of our friends are on the internet, but we did come up with a list of about twenty-five names that would not be receiving anything unless we wrote a letter by hand and actually mailed it. Those people will be getting a handwritten greeting from us. Family will also receive a Christmas card at our family gathering. I decided my December blog post would be my Christmas greeting for those of you who follow it. I hope you don't feel somehow cheated!

Living in Zaïre/DRCongo, Africa for almost twenty years (1965-1984), letters were very important in our life. Hardy was there alone from 1965-1967 and our courtship was done by mail. 
After we got married in 1968, we lived in the provincial town of Kikwit for eight years. During those years we could not use the telephone to communicate except for emergencies. We did not have our own phones but had to go to the post office in the capital city, Kinshasa, and there we often had to wait close to ten hours before we had access to one. Never mind that it took us several days to travel to the capital city, some of it by road and some of it by cable ferry.

Computers were not yet in use. So we wrote letters, lots and lots of letters. Most of them were in the form of aerograms. One small sheet of thin light-blue paper, folded twice and then sealed along the sides. If you wrote very small you could get quite a lot of information on this piece of paper, and I usually poured my heart out.

                                                 

When we returned from Africa in 1984, Hardy continued working in Bible translation with the United Bible Societies and then with the Canadian Bible Society. This necessitated that our family settle in the Kitchener-Waterloo area of Ontario. Our extended families lived mostly in Manitoba and that meant we were only able to see them once a year, usually in summer. It was certainly easier to communicate with them from Ontario than from Africa. There was good phone service but I still wrote a lot of letters and sent birthday and Christmas cards. Our parents sent packages at Christmas.

About three years after we returned to Canada, on a snowy December afternoon, I was walking across an  empty lot when I saw something in the snow. I bent down and picked it up. It was a Christmas card. Inside the card was a letter. This is what it said:

There was no cheque, just the card. The letter made me sad. It sounded like a man who was lonely. It seemed to me that his children did not care much about him. They had taken the cheque and discarded this loving letter from their father. It was left lying in the snow. I decided to pick it up and bring it to them, since the address on the letter was not that far from where we lived. I was hoping they had dropped the card accidentally and would be happy to receive it from me. However, I received no warm reception and no thank-you for having retrieved the card. Although they didn't verbalize it, I felt like I was being told, MYOB.

Before I took the card to the family, I copied it as a reminder to myself that family is precious and that there are lonely people in the world especially at Christmas. I have discovered that sometimes, when I feel rejected or left out, it helps me to do something special for someone else who feels abandoned and is much worse off than I am.

Mary and Joseph, in the Bible narrative (Luke 2), must have felt lonely so far from home, particularly with a new baby. However, angels came to their rescue, and made sure they did not feel as if no one cared about them.

I leave you, my friends, with this Christmas greeting: 

May the beauty, joy and blessings of the Christmas season be yours to share with those you love!