Culture is more than just our ancestors …

I always look forward to sending and receiving Christmas cards. I hear all the reasons people don’t continue this tradition but I can almost set my calendar by when I receive specific cards from special people. For instance, I have a dear friend in Hammond, LA from whom I have swapped cards & letters with since we worked together 25 years ago. I am always anxious to hear about her family and her card has always been the first one received each year so I can mark the date that the season has begun and if my cards aren’t done, I better get busy.

Around the middle of the season I receive a card and note from Daonne Caldwell. Daonne and I were neighbors and high school classmates and through this close proximity we established a special friendship. We rode the bus together, studied, had slumber parties and now are both retired. She lives in a Southern town – if you want to call Atlanta a town – and has remained faithful to many of the southern traditions in which we both grew up. Her mother now lives with her and I love to see the artistry when pictures are posted on Face Book as she bakes some of the goodies that were high on everyone’s wish list when Ms. Doris had a hand in the cooking! Our cards contain news about family and church as we both grew up in the same church and were raised in Christian homes. She often mentions projects she is working on through her church and I can relate to these because of our faith.

One of the last cards we receive each year is from my closest cousin, Evelyn Jakub, residing in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Evelyn has four children that we have always affectionately called the “Z” kids. Not a year has gone by that Evvie has not sent a letter AND a picture of her family of six from the time each child was born. Now one of the things that makes her cards so intriguing is the paths each of her children have taken. As I read this year’s card, I had to digress about how different our family’s lives have been. Her mother and mine were first cousins. They were close in age with Aunt Edna being the youngest child of the Kent family and my mother, Lucille being the oldest grandchild of the same family. Therefore we followed suit and became close also, only ten months apart in age but a lifetime apart in residency. Evvie was raised in a Boston suburb, but my mother married a Mississippi boy and after traveling with the Navy, they settled within 40 miles of his home and parents IN Mississippi. In the south we tend to stay close to home. Many of us travel but it always seems sweetest to go home again. Our children may live in another town or community – or even a neighboring state, but you’ll hear many a southern mom say that if they can’t get to their children by car, they live too far! If they do relocate, it is generally to another state in the South with both of our grown children living in Mississippi. On the other hand, the Jakub family is scattered and were only able to all gather at the family home for a day or so in 2014. Besides Massachusetts, they live in New York, New Hampshire, Virginia and Panama (the country)! Likewise, our children’s lives are very different. Southern families love and support college football – we live for the first game of the season and to see in which holiday bowl we will play at season’s end. Vacations and weddings are planned around the football season of our favorite team – and that’s NO joke! We love the beach, sunning, tanning, shopping, fishing and competitive little league in the summer with soccer taking a second to … you guessed it … football! Unlike our northern family who are involved in all the cold sports like ice skating, cross country skiing, snowboarding, kite-boarding, hockey and in the summer kayaking, hiking and climbing! They shop when it’s necessary but not as a “hobby” like we do. There are many other differences that this yankee girl had to adapt to when she became a southern adult and the wife of another southerner … how to make dressing instead of stuffing at holidays, to always have sweet tea in the frig, the importance of not going anywhere without earrings and lipstick and of course, ladies do not wear linen or white after Labor Day OR before Easter.

Then at long last and when we know the season is officially over, we receive the hand-written and illustrated card from our friends Norm & Carolyn Newberry of Burbank, CA. It is probably amazing to most people that we still exchange cards during the Christmas season when we don’t communicate any other time of the year but this is one of the oldest friendships that I have had outside of family. In a younger life, this precious couple passed through Meridian MS via a short naval career and I was their babysitter – a teenager who loved children. Their son who was ten two years old then is now a doctor in Boston after 45 years with children of his own and their daughter who was born after they left Mississippi and whom I have never met lives in the Mid/Northwest. I especially enjoy their letters because they are so original and full of exciting activities that I can only read about.

So thus it continues, year after wonderful year, communication on paper with friends and family who sit down that ONE time each year to share their lives, loves, accomplishments, and sometimes even sadness with others. If it were not for these cards, it would be easier to believe what the media reports about people from different regions of our country and how they live but because I KNOW people in Massachusetts, Georgia, and even California, I continue to have faith that we do indeed live in a great nation and although our backgrounds and ancestors have brought many traditions and celebrations with them that are carried on by future generations, our culture is what we make it and largely influenced by those around us.