“Sending Christmas cards and holiday greetings to our friends and loved ones is fast becoming a lost art.  But don’t try telling that to your postal worker.  Last year, the U.S. Postal Service delivered more than 20 billion pieces of mail between Thanksgiving and Christmas – and an estimated 3.4 billion cards and letters between December 1st and 24th.

 

This vast quantity of correspondence reminds us of just one of the many ways we are connected to our family and friends during the holiday season.  Even in the age of instant communication, cellular phones and E-mail, the Christmas Card and holiday letter hold a special place in our holiday hearts. 

 

So if you were to get a Christmas card from Southern Missouri, what would it say? 

First of all, there is the snow we hope will be falling softly on the Ozarks, on the fallow fields, and on our lawns (but not our driveways or roads) for the holiday trip to a family dinner.  It might mention the cheerful decorations along our Main Streets and in our shop windows.  And it would surely describe the thousands of countless acts of service our volunteers are performing through their communities and places of worship.

 

And our Christmas letter would dwell on the family we love so much and the past year.  Summer vacations, educational accomplishments, projects we have completed, new jobs, and perhaps even new members of the family would make up the proud details we would like to share.  It might even describe who is coming for Christmas.  The far-away family returning back home to Southern Missouri for the holiday brings a special warmth to the festivities. 

 

At the same time, we should be mindful of those who cannot be with us for Christmas:  Members of our family who are ill and can’t travel or are eating their Christmas dinners in the hospitals. Those dearly departed who brought us great joy and remain with us in great memories.  And those in service occupations, working on Christmas in hospitals, firehouses, police stations, pilots and flight attendants, and many others we rely upon, even on the holiest day of the year. 

 

And finally, of course, a Christmas card from Southern Missouri is not complete without a wish for continued blessings and a share in the prosperity of the coming year.  Simply by having so many good things to write about, however, we are all wealthy in spirit.  Our faith, during this most important season, is the foundation for our families all year round. 

 

For my part, I hope this holiday season finds you with the same blessings I am looking forward to in the coming week – a family with whom I can share the holiday spirit and the Christmas meal, a church in which we can give thanks for the presence of God in our lives, and that light dusting of snow that means so much to a perfect Christmas morning.

 

So get those Christmas cards in the mail – millions and millions of them – as soon as you can!  The Post Office is ready and waiting.

 

There is one last class of deliveries we should be mindful of this holiday season – and that is the more than seven million pounds of deliveries the Postal Service made last year to soldiers serving in the Middle East.  This year, the brave men and women in uniform and away from home deserve all that we can send them in boxes, as well as what we can send them in prayers.  They are sacrificing this holiday at home for freedom and security in the world for men, women and children they may never meet. 

 

From Southern Missouri, there is no greater way to tell the world what this holiday means to us.”

                              

-30-