70 years of greetings
Our special family card’s older than me!
Picking up the familiar envelope from the doormat, I smiled.
‘It’s back again!’ I exclaimed clocking the Australian postmark.
The tradition of Christmas cards may be dying out. But not in my family. And this wasn’t just any old Christmas card – it was a historic one.
In 1949, my mum Phyllis and my dad Alan had posted a card from their home in Wallasey to Dad’s brother Bob, who lived nearby.
Designed by cartoonist Rowland Emett, the card showed a train of carol singers travelling through the snow.
The message inside the card read, This is our favourite, so you can send it back to us next Christmas!
Mum and Dad may have just been joking, but Bob did just as they asked – and sent it back the next Christmas.
Before we knew it, it’d become a bit of a tradition.
‘What does it say inside, Mum?’ my sisters and I would ask when she got the card back every other year.
A new message would be added each year and soon the card started to fill up with festive well wishes.
In 1953, my Uncle Bob moved to Melbourne, Australia and, all of a sudden, the card took on a new element.
It was no longer a card that arrived from down the road…it was an international Christmas card!
Don’t forget it will cost you 1/3 next year, Bob had written in the card that year.
One shilling and three pence in old money – the price of postage.
Then, in 1956, we added a new Christmas card to the tradition.
‘I’m sending you a new one, so we both have one each year,’ my Mum told her brother-in-law.
Again, it was an Emett card and every time we received either card, it would have an update about the family.
We carried on trading them and as the years went by, the original cards started to get fragile.
‘We need to make sure that they survive another 20 years,’ my dad said, taping the frayed parts. Hi Phyllis and family – Happy Christmas, the message from my cousin Alan in 1986 said. He’d taken over from his dad Bob, sadly no longer still with us. I loved that the family was still following our tradition. Alan was living in Newcastle, Australia – so we were still sending cards internationally. Then, in 2003, my Mum passed the legacy over to me. She was getting older, and Dad had passed away a few years earlier. ‘Make sure you keep the tradition up,’ she said to me, handing over the fragile card. I take it seriously and make sure its always in the postbox on time – it can take up to two weeks to get to Australia. Though both my mum and my uncle – the original senders – are sadly no longer with us, Alan and I keep it going.
I love reading the messages on the cards. We’ve added extra pages over the years and they give a lovely insight into new births, marriages and other notable family occasions. It’s like a step back in time. We’ve figured out the original card’s travelled over 598,500 miles since 1953 – that’s 24 times around the world!
I’m amazed the card is still going, and hasn’t been lost on its travels.
One day, I’ll pass it down to my daughter, Katie, 36.
It’s my favourite-ever Christmas tradition!
I make sure it’s always in the postbox on time…