Edit 6: Hung with Care
There’s a small ritual I never skip at Christmas-though this year it looks a little different.
We’ve found a new way to display our cards. At the entrance to our book nook, already dressed in its deepest lush, holiday green, a collection of pine garlands stretch across and drape down the space. Along the branches the cards are clipped with small, clear clothespins-nearly invisible, as if the notes themselves chose where to land.
Before the tree is fully fluffed, before candles are lit with any real intention, I gather the envelopes that have arrived in our mailbox, and one by one, without fanfare, begin.
I don’t frame the year.
I hang it.
There’s no order to it. No symmetry to chase. Just thoughtful spacing-like breaths. The doorway becomes a threshold not only between rooms, but between moments.
Each card carries something familiar. Handwriting I could recognize anywhere. Names that arrive faithfully, year after year. Others are new-new babies, new cities, new last names. Quiet reminders that life keeps moving, even when traditions remain.
I linger as I hang them. I reread messages. I pause at photographs. I smile at cards that feel exactly like the people who sent them. Some feel lighter this year. Others fuller. A few land like punctuation marks in a season I didn’t quite realize I was still holding.
The garland isn’t decorative in the trendy sense. It isn’t styled or perfected or even an original concept. But it’s honest. And it’s one of the few Christmas decorations that feels less like ornamentation and more like an archive.
Proof of connection.
Proof of showing up.
Proof of being remembered.
And then, once they’re all in place, I notice the space between them.
The inches of pine separating one card from the next. The pauses. The quiet. The distance that doesn’t signal absence, only change.
This year, those spaces feel more pronounced. Children growing into lives of their own. Loved ones celebrating elsewhere. Traditions stretching-not breaking, just stretching-to accommodate who we are becoming.
The garlands hold that, too.
It reminds me that love doesn’t require proximity to endure-that connection doesn’t dissolve when the room changes or that home is less about where everyone gathers and more about how we keep each other close even when we’re not standing side by side.
So the cards stay up a touch longer than most decorations. After the tree comes down, after the calendar turns, they’ll remain.
Because in the quiet of January, when the house exhales and Christmas releases us into the thrall of carnival season, I like seeing the year still there: hung with care, clipped lightly to green branches, reminding me of this: We are still connected.
Even here.
Even now.
