Paladini Potpie

Adventures within The Crust!

Christmas Card Prayers

4 Comments

I always stick our Christmas cards up on the dining room wall with sticky-tac or poster putty. They’re one of my favourite decorations!

One Christmas season about twenty years ago John was looking at them and he noticed one he hadn’t seen yet.

“I didn’t know we got a card from these guys…” He was so happy to see it!

He began to wander along the wall, looking at other cards; and we realized he had missed several Christmas greetings.  How sad!

So a new Paladini tradition was birthed.

When the Christmas cards come in the mail I don’t open them. I save them till dinnertime, and set one or two by each plate as I set the table. I go “clockwise” around the table, divvying them out.

Some days we only get one or two in the mail, but at the height of the Christmas season we might have IMG_2925several by each plate.

After dinner we stay at the table, and take turns opening our cards and reading them out loud.  We pass around enclosed pictures and read the enclosed newsletters.  And then whoever opened that card prays aloud for the person or family who sent it.

We’ve found that it’s a sweet and really meaningful way to stay connected as a family – and it’s a good way to feel connected to our extended family and friends.

But as I say that, I realize we’re already feeling pretty well connected with most of the people who are dear to us.  There’s much to be said for e-mail and cheap phone calls and facebook.

Things are changing.

And as far as that goes, things are changing in our little empty nest too! This year it will just be John and I gathered around the table reading Christmas cards aloud. But we’re looking forward to it and I have my new package of sticky-tac ready to go!

Advertisement

Author: paladinipotpie

Welcome! My name is Andrena Paladini and this is a blog about family and love and faith and fun. I call it Paladini Potpie because a potpie is like an adventure in a crust. You never know what might come up, but it’s always going to be good! Think of the best potpie you’ve ever eaten…hot flaky crust holding a rich savory sauce and all kinds of pieces of meat and vegetables…and who knows what? As a family, we’ve chosen to live within the parameters of God’s love and protection. This is the crust of our Paladini Potpie. The crust never changes. Within this crust, the savory sauce of family love binds it all together. That is also fairly constant. But beyond the crust and the sauce we can add just about anything! Good ideas come our way and we’ve adopted and adapted them to add to what John calls our treasure box of memories. These stories and ideas from John’s treasure box of memories are the ingredients I’m putting into our Paladini Potpie. (Okay, so this ridiculous mixing of metaphors about treasure boxes and potpies is exactly what I’m talking about. Silly and ungrammatically correct. But both illustrations work… so we’ll mix them together and it’ll be just fine!) John and I have been married for 30 years. Our children have wonderfully doubled in number since David married Amanda, Monica married Dan, and Matthew married Sarah. And the newest little treats that have been added to our potpie are six adorable grandchildren - Ethan, Angelina, Nathan, Audrey, Maleia and Caleb! I hope you’ll subscribe to my Paladini Potpie blog, and keep up with all the fun new ingredients I add. Hopefully you’ll enjoy our stories and ideas, and find something you’ll want to put into your own potpie! Bon appétit!

4 thoughts on “Christmas Card Prayers

  1. I love those photos! They really capture the love in our family!

  2. that is great idea but sadly not many actually take the time to send a card any more!

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s