Christmas cards that touch the heart

First, I want to wish one and all a Merry, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. (Reminder for New Year’s Eve revelers: As you count your blessings, make sure that you also count your fingers. All accounted for? Good. So be very careful when you explode those firecrackers, especially the Bawang, Super Lolo and Sinturon ni Hudas.)

Anyway, busy with last-minute shopping, maybe you didn’t notice that there have been fewer and fewer people who bother to send Christmas cards. Blame it on text-messaging and the e-mail which are admittedly faster and much cheaper.

But being conservative and traditional, I still love to receive Christmas cards which can effectively convey more feelings than a thousand text messages or kilometric e-mails ever could. Believe it or not but I still keep in my treasure chest meaningful (and therefore memorable) Christmas cards that I received years ago, some of which (particularly the ones depicting religious images like The Madonna and Child, and The Sacred Heart) I had framed and placed on my headboard.

Cards connect you to relatives now living in faraway places or friends you haven’t seen or heard from in ages in a way that, again, text messages and e-mails never can. You can delete text messages and e-mails but cards are as permanent and as indelible as true friendship.

I haven’t met Julio Iglesias in person (although I have interviewed him by telephone) but since the early ’90s, he has been sending me Christmas cards (featuring the photo of his children, enabling me to follow their growth). I’ll get this year’s card by and by. It usually comes late (no thanks to the clogged holiday mails), along with that of director John Woo who has never failed to send me a card after I interviewed him in Hong Kong (for Mission Impossible II, starring Tom Cruise who was with him) a few years ago.

On this page and page C-1 are four of the very few cards that I received this Christmas Season. They are, you will agree, heart-warming and touching.

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