When the kids were in grade school, we lived in California and we started creating our own Christmas cards.  We made linoleum prints of drawings that Mary and Seth did. We would start in late October, because my goal was always to get them in the mail on, or slightly before December 1st.  That way we would get the most responses. And it really meant a lot to get mail, being so far away from all our family and old friends.

Each of the kids would do several drawings, and then we would make a family decision, choosing one for each of them.  Ollie would do the cuts with their drawings as patterns. Then the process of our card construction would begin.

First we would buy the paper, actually a card stock, since we made postcards.  Postcards were cheaper, and we had a lot of cards to send.  And even though we always bought white, there were many possibilities, with an amazing amount of shades and hues to choose from, as well as lots of different types of textures.  Texture determined the way the ink would adhere to the surface of the paper. And we tried out different ones before making the final decision. Cost was also a factor.

After we bought the paper and ink, we were ready to go.  We had the other things we needed at home: a special roller, a piece of glass, and, of course the linoleum blocks which my husband had made by gluing the linoleum to blocks of wood.

With all our materials in front of us, we began by cutting the paper (card stock) to post card size.  Then we would squeeze the ink onto the glass. We usually only used red and green ink, one or the other on each one, so the drawing would always show up in white.  After that, the roller was used to thin out the ink to the right consistency for applying it to the block.

Rolling the ink on the linoleum was the beginning of a process.  First, the ink was applied. Second, the card was placed on top of the block.  Third, we pressed down on the paper, so that the ink would soak in. And fourth, the paper was removed from the block and laid out to dry, wherever we could find a flat place to lay it.  It then had to dry for several hours before it could be put into a stack. Finally, the cards had to be trimmed with a scissors, and re-stacked, ready to be written on.

My favorite memory of our card making was the sight of thirty or forty cards at a time, sitting on the top of every horizontal surface of our home.  The counters, the kitchen table, the piano and the end tables, even the top of the refrigerator, were all decorated with our drying masterpieces.

We did the process again and again, until all the cards were finished.  Then my work began.  Each entry on my list consisted of choosing a card, addressing it, licking and applying the return address, licking the postage stamp and pounding it on, and finally, penning a short, personal, newsy note, written small enough to get a lot in.  This was our gift, a sharing of our lives, and a sharing of our collective artistic effort. It was worth it, too. Each year as we mailed them out on December 1st, we were full of anticipation, as we went home to wait for the mail.

This year, in memory of Seth, I had wanted to send out postcard prints of two of Seth’s designs.  The ones we found, and the ones I remembered the most were of birds. One was a bird dressed up as Santa.  The other one was a Christmas tree, with bare branches, decorated with birds in Santa Claus hats and a few bulbs hanging on its empty limbs.  We didn’t get to do it. It was too difficult emotionally, and we thought of it too late. But, next year, you look in your mailbox after December 1st.  You watch for those Santa birds to fly in with a few sweet memories from the Wades.