I like the tradition of sending holiday cards. Even though I'm not religious. Even though I sort of reject the hype of the holiday. It's a neat thing, really, sending a bunch of people you know a piece of mail and getting scores of pieces of actual personal mail yourself.

We got over a hundred pieces of mail in the 2004-2005 Holiday Season. About seventy per cent of the items were from people and not businesses or nonprofits. A large percentage of them had ornaments, trees, snowmen, santas and/or reindeer or generic designs. Three had works of art, eight were quite openly religious but one of these embraced both Hannukkah and Christmas. Nineteen were personal photos. One included a dog. One was just a dog. Eight cards had photos or cartoons of critters that weren't reindeer: dogs, cats, mice, polar bears. Seven cards seemed primarily to espouse peace with the word or a dove. We got twelve family newsletters, four business cards, one insert advertising a self-produced CD, one laminated sheet of recommendations of plumbers, electricians, etc. and three sets of Christmas tag stickers from a printing company who needs to cleanse its mailing list. One recipient of our card responded with a large envelope of clippings and unpublished writing. And one person mailed us a can of black-eyed peas, cornbread mix and some relish. One company sent a booklet of recipes and made a donation to Capital Area Food Bank.

I probably sent somewhere between 175 and 200 cards. So I didn't get as many pieces of mail as I sent. I got a few of my mailings returned and thereby realized I'd lost track of a couple of people.

I'll do it again next year. Probably even if postage goes up the promised four more cents. Because it really is fun, isn't it? My favorites? Two photos. One of a family we shared the three star meal with this summer in the garden of the restaurant. One of a friend's two teen-aged daughters and a cute dog in a convertible. And that box with the good luck dinner. But really I liked getting them all. Even the ones from our brokers and our vet.

It's a much better tradition than presents. Although I guess the package tags and the good luck dinner cross the line. Only a little, though.