Writing Christmas cards doesn’t feel like a novelty any more. It’s starting to feel like that other C word – a chore

EVERY CHRISTMAS, amid swirling thoughts of presents and puddings and chocolate and cheese, one task looms larger than all the others – writing the Christmas cards.

It’s something I used to love when I first moved in with my now-husband; dashing off personalised messages and season’s greetings – a grown-up feeling, as the proud owner of a return address. I sent 50 or 60 every year, keeping careful notes on how to spell names correctly, and who owned which children.

Eventually I embraced the 21st century and typed out my address list in a Word document (much to the delight of friends and family who still come looking for it every year).

But now there are three kids in the mix, and a writing job that wraps itself around those kids, and a house that requires a (very occasional) clean. Writing Christmas cards doesn’t feel like the novelty it did back then. It’s starting to feel like that other C word – a chore.

And last year, I let it slip and slide until really, it was getting far too late. And I thought then it might be the year – time to draw a line, to save the trees, to preserve my sanity and limited hours. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t step away from the crisp blank cards with their sparkly Santas and minimalist snowmen. And late though it was, it felt better to send cards that might arrive after the big day than not send any at all.

And now, this year, here we are again. Christmas card time. So today I take out the list.

The first people have had a house move since last year. I write the card, then address it with the unfamiliar street name in the text message, making sure to spell it right. Next, four non-movers. Then another new address. This time I don’t know it. I send a message to ask. The card won’t be a surprise but that’s okay, cards aren’t really a surprise. Three more that are exactly as they were last year – same address, same people – life mirrors list.

Then one with a new baby. How do they spell her name – with the H at the end or not? I scroll back through text messages to find the birth announcement. With the H. I write the card, and think how surreal it is that a little person who didn’t exist last Christmas is here today, and getting cards. I add her name to the list. And it strikes me, as it does each December, that the Christmas card list is older than my kids, and older than my marriage – I’ve been adding babies and editing addresses and saving new versions every year since 2001.

And every year, it serves not only as a list of addresses for cards, but as a record of what has changed since the year before. New babies. New houses. New husbands. New surnames. A name added when he moves in with her. And sometimes, when it doesn’t work out, a name removed.

What I wish now is that I had all the lists, or at least the very first one, to look back and see how lives have curved and switched and changed and evolved. But I only have the newest one. A file not saved – a paper-trail extinguished. A history blurred.

I keep going through the list, until I get to one name in particular. It catches me. I must have said something out loud, because my daughter who is sitting beside me asks what’s wrong.

I tell her I’ve just come to my grandmother’s name on the list, and I’m feeling sad, because there’s no need to send a card this year.

I’ve been writing to her for as long as I can remember – since I first started making homemade cards at school. Bringing them with me when we went to stay with her each Christmas – when I was the lucky grandchild who got to stay on for an extra week after everyone else went home. Melted-butter one-sided toast and a real fire and books and toys and blankets and warmth and love. I saw her a lot less in recent years, but she was always there, the way people are. Only now she’s not.

It’s not the sadness that comes with real grief – not the kind that comes when someone dies too young, or too suddenly. It’s a moment of realisation, a jolt. Because her name is on the list, but there will be no card.

My daughter looks at me with her big grey eyes and says nothing at first. Then she has an idea. ‘Why don’t you write a card anyway, Mum,’ she says, ‘And don’t post it, but just put it away somewhere special?’ It’s perfect. And I go on through the list, and see that there are two new names to add. Two great granddaughters to my grandmother, two nieces for me. Life-changing babies to all of us who know them. New to the list and new to the world. Oblivious to Christmas, but for those of us around them, making it complete.