It is the time of the year when I actually read some of the mail that comes into our house. We don’t exactly have a ritual for sorting and dealing with our mail because our schedules vary quite a bit day to day, but usually Susan is the one who stops at the mailbox on her way home and picks up the mail which lands on our table around dinnertime if we don’t have evening meetings and a bit later if we do. Most of the year the majority of the mail we receive comes in the form of advertisements. We seem to receive a lot of invitations to apply for credit cards, though we have no need of additional credit cards. We get a lot of invitations to switch insurance companies, though we are not dissatisfied with our agent or the company from which we buy insurance and have been with the same insurance company for three decades now. The good folks at AARP seem to be convinced that the next letter will entice me to join their organization, but they also use a lot of different techniques to get me to open their letters. “Membership cards enclosed” with no information about what organization is involved on the outside the envelope is one of their popular approaches. “Open immediately, time sensitive materials enclosed,” is another. I’m not sure what is time sensitive about joining the organization. I know I can count on another opportunity to join at least once a month.

We still get a bit of mail for my mother, even though she passed away nearly five years ago. The cruise ship lines seem to have quite a bit of advertising aimed at people who cannot go on cruises. Mom had a lot of charities to which she donated that seem to think they might get another donation by sending her their appeals.

And then there are the catalogues from companies with whom I do business on the Internet. I don’t understand why I receive so many print catalogues from companies whose products I view online. I realize that I get a lot of junk e-mail, but the physical mail is annoying. You have to give them your mailing address in order to make the order online - they need to know where to ship the merchandise. Once they have that address, they hammer us with catalogues that are never opened. If I want one of their products, I’ll shop online, thank you very much.

So, for most of the year we do a quick sort of the mail to make sure we don’t miss many bills, of which there are fewer each year as we convert to electronic payments and e-statements, and toss most of it in the garbage.

This time of year, however, the mail actually brings things we want to read. It is the season of cards and letters from friends. We have friends with all different kinds of annual greetings. I love the cards with two or three sentences of hand-written news about family and the events of the year. We also get printed newsletters. Some of them are a couple of pages long with small print. Computers with page layout programs have produced some family newsletters with lots of pictures, headlines and other features that we didn’t see much of a few decades ago. We have a few correspondents who produce verse in rhyme, an effort that I haven’t been tempted to imitate, but which I usually appreciate nonetheless. Each year brings more and more photo collage cards, usually from a commercial printing service, with a half dozen photos and a simple greeting. Often these cards aren’t personalized, still they give us a glimpse at children who change a lot during the year, and sometimes a sense of the adventures that our friends have been taking.

I was wondering if we could sort the holiday greetings by the age of the senders. My theory is that folks who are older than us are more likely to have a printed newsletter and folks who are younger than us are more likely to have photo cards and people who are close to us in age are most likely to have an inexpensive card with a hand-written note. But it doesn’t quite work out that simply. We receive a few newsletters from friends who are younger than us and quite a few cards with hand-written notes from folks who are a bit older than us. Of course the category of “folks who are older than us” is a bit smaller each year as we become the senior generation and friends of our parents’ generation are passing on. On the other hand, I have peers who are great grandparents, something that never ceases to amaze me.

Not all of our holiday greetings come in the mail and not all arrive in time for Christmas. We have one friend who doesn’t even make an attempt, sending out an annual Valentine’s Day greeting in place of Christmas cards. In our household, we try to answer the greetings we receive and it sometimes takes us to St. Patrick’s Day to get that done.

Each year we receive more an more of our holiday greetings in email and through social media. I haven’t become very involved in Facebook, but I have found that I’m looking at it more and more because I enjoy seeing what my friends are up to. I’m amazed at how many friends use that media to send birthday and holiday greetings. I am also amazed at how many people expect that I would look at it every day, something that I haven’t quite gotten around to doing.

As annoying as much of the mail can be, and as difficult as it is to keep our dining table free from paper clutter, I guess I’m not ready to give up on the postal service. I still enjoy reading some of the things that come in the mail and this time of the year I even find myself looking forward to reading it, a sensation that I thought I had lost completely.

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