Finding Christmas

Dec. 3 2024

The antique mall was bustling with activity the days following Thanksgiving. Filly walked up and down the aisle in Denver, enjoying the booths with sparkling red and green and snowy white Christmas decorations and the vintage music that was playing in the background.

She stopped at a booth with books and cards. There was a little stool to sit on while a person browsed the vintage cards. Filly gratefully sat, as this would take a while, and looked through hundreds of cards…and found a handful of vintage Christmas cards, many of them written in 1911 when postage stamp was only one cent and when people could receive a postcard with only their name and city on the address. They must have had to go to the post office to collect mail as mail boxes had not been invented yet.

Filly loved things that showed the extent of the efforts people made to communicate, especially with those they loved, at Christmas time with cards. In the digital age, where people sent electronic mail, her family were some of the few people around who still valued paper Christmas cards. She decided that it was memorable that the words on these vintage post cards had endured for more than a hundred years and decided to use the post cards as her Christmas cards this year. Each person would get their own unique post card, and could reflect on the importance of family and communication as it happened historically, when the nation was new and freedom was paramount and each voice mattered.

Filly remembered having a conversation about her dad one time, with an artist. She was detailing the overwhelming impact her dad had on her life with his discussions about widgets, and explaining the problem of “too big” government, and how her dad had shaped her opinions and allegiances.

The artist had said that her memories of her parents growing up were all “stories” that she told herself and that these stories with her parents, kept her from being “free” and from “being her real self”. He talked about a class he had gone to in Denver and how he had been able to reject all those stories and claim the truth of who he really was … and that truth turned out to be that he was unfaithful to his girlfriend and unfaithful to his parents, and liked to drink and liked to use drugs and was now involved with multiple partners and was not interested in marriage. That “truth” he was expressing, seemed to Filly like a lie about the good man she believed he was at his core. She felt like he needed to “reject” THAT truth, that he had expressed in that class.

Because of his choices, the artist seemed like someone who lived with the constant fear of missing out (Fomo) and people who make choices based on fear were usually making bad choices. Filly was not afraid of being a person who relied on her parents and their influences because she trusted them to guide her properly and she “cherished” those choices and those “stories”.

Filly had listened and though she thought the artist was talented with paint, his thinking had become “illegible” and she explained to him that her dad, (and mom) had been successful and had shaped her thoughts in a positive way so why would she want to get rid of the “stories”.

Initially she had been interested in taking that class in Denver, but the more she heard about it, and about rejecting what parents said as “stories” the more she did not agree with it, or a lot of other things that were happening in that beautiful city due to mismanagement. Who else, Filly thought, other than God, had the child’s best interest at heart than the mom and the dad? Why would any rational person reject those people and their thoughts, especially when their suggestions and communications came from a place of great love and support?

Regarding cards, Filly’s mom had made her Valentines cards with red construction paper and white doilies, and her dad had mailed her his own “Herbie’s Gazette” with stories and cartoons and feature articles, when she was in college that she had loved and saved. The ongoing communication with her parents over the years, was vital and she loved the “stories” that they contained. Like these little Christmas cards, written, stamped and mailed in 1911, the words would not be forgotten.

The people who wrote these cards, might be gone but their words of love and support had endured. Maybe some of them, probably were not perfect, and in some way maybe had flaws, but the desire to be of service to their friends and family, offering to visit, and offering words of love and joy, gave them good standing, in her eyes. Filly believed they were valuable even in their imperfection.

That was why Jesus chose, as his twelve Apostles, men who were flawed. They had made mistakes but each of his chosen ones, had repented, and been healed of their wrong footsteps or wrong direction. Filly thought of “One Direction” and how a beautiful group of young men, with too much fame and without their parents guidance, also went off the rails and some did indeed fall prey to drugs and depression and mistakes. Money did not make a person immune to the targeting by evil, and perhaps even enhanced it.

Having flaws from the past was also perhaps part of a “story”. But forgetting that those mistakes took a person in the wrong direction, and continuing to make the same mistakes, was not “freedom”. Freedom came with the truth of recognizing the supreme being God, who forgives and gives second chances to people who have done evil, to repent and turn their lives around. There is freedom in the security of doing good.

Stories that are grounded in truth, especially the stories in the bible, helped Filly personally turn her life around. She too was not perfect, but she believed she was healed and forgiven of her misdeeds. But she still, consistently had to reject the suggestions of evil. She constantly cautioned her children to do the same. Evil comes in many ways, wrong priorities, ignoring children, and the increased influences of too much modern media without parental supervision

Evil targeted men using women who claimed to be suffering from self esteem issues, but made themselves available to married men, and these situations were temptations to be avoided. Evil targeted women with men who flattered and claimed to be single, but made themselves available to married women, and these situations were also temptations to be avoided.

And purity of the body was not important because it helped PREVENT unwanted pregnancy, but because it allowed a person to be unbiased during that period of time where someone could objectively see if their “intended” was legitimate marriage material. Filly understood that intimacy, just for the purpose of animal satisfaction, provided nothing enduring, purposeful or true. Purity, guarded by society and by the individual, was in fact a protection. Not a weapon, not a prize to be paid for or hijacked.

Filly knew that Christmas cards were only one venue for cards and that cards were used now in many arena’s from business cards, to SD cards, to Trading cards to playing cards. But none, Filly thought, could compare to the beauty and purpose of Christmas cards. Christmas, the time of the year when families could remember without a memory card, the birth of Jesus, and the words of the angels “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men”.

Filly stood up from her chair, picked up the cards she had carefully selected, and took them to the register. She would write a letter to go with the cards to explain how she viewed them and how she appreciated the cards, and the people who wrote them in the past and the stories they told, as well as the value of the people she was sending them to. She knew when the cards were received, they would provide the means for a better understanding of how to “find Christmas” in even the smallest and most insignificant things.

Like a 1911 Christmas postcard.

Where even the smallest individual voice not lost, censured or targeted.