JOY ALONG THE WAY; WEEK BETWEEN HOLIDAYS ONE OF SWEETEST TIMES OF YEAR

The week between Christmas and New Year's Day is one of the sweetest weeks in the year. The great rush of purchasing, wrapping, trimming, baking is over. One can temporarily sit back in an easy chair, take a deep breath and relax. I like to spend a portion of this time going over the Christmas cards I have received. Sometimes it seems to me they miraculously make their way across oceans, rivers, mountains, prairies, small towns and metropolises to land in my mailbox. Ah, the postal system, a lumbering giant but a workalcoholic one.

"Going over" the cards means I spend mental time thinking of the sender, where he/she is in life, what they are and hope to be so far as I know. I look at the picture on a card and think, egotistically, that the sender has chosen this card, particularly, to send to me. Those with the names of the sender printed on it flattens my ego. So I shift my thinking to why they have chosen that card to send to everyone. I think it explains their feelings about the yuletide and it makes a statement about their attitude toward life.

Here is one I feel that was chosen especially for me. Knowing how I love the birds and little furry creatures of meadows and woodlands, the card depicts a snowy scene where a rabbit family is constructing a snow rabbit. Through a handy mental device, I insert myself into the scene, an onlooker, off to the side, unseen but seeing. Smiling Mother Rabbit is there, adjusting a hat to fit over the tall, snow ears of the snow rabbit. The rabbit children are delighted. The youngest, a boy rabbit, in warm coat and mittens, is sitting in the snow, clapping his hands. Girl Rabbit is holding the hand of the snow rabbit, cleverly made a forest stick with five branched twigs for fingers. One can deduct from the irregular placement of the coal eyes and mouth, that the rabbit children have placed these facial features. From their own precious winter hoard, now shown in the picture, they have brought a carrot for the nose. Little birds have come with tiny red stockings to hang on the snow rabbit. Another bird is arranging a garland of strung cranberries between two trees. Snowflakes are falling. It is a picture showing family values we speak of so much today and community cooperation. I feel good sitting there watching. Yes, this card was chosen for me (no matter that it may have come out of a box of 20).

The nice thing about greeting cards is that they always show the better side of life. Do the artists, unthinkingly, know this, a la C.S. Lewis in his essays on "Mere Christianity," or do they have to take course of instructions offered by the card companies?

Here is a card with the printed name of the sender. It, no doubt, has been chosen to show his/her attitude toward life. It shows Santa Claus, playing a golden flute, skating through life from the front of the card to both inside pages, to exit the back of the card, still playing, leaving a trail of musical notes in the air. When you study the unworded notes you can see the song is "I wish you a Merry Christmas." I take that is the sender's wish, to glide through life like this, leaving a pleasant trail behind. That's good.

Some of the cards reflect the geographical region of the sender. I have only two first cousins left on this, our watch. One is in Florida and her card shows the universal Santa sitting on a pier, both feet dangling in the water. He is surrounded by sea gulls and dolphins. This, of course, is alien to my thoughts about Santa's usually snowy background, but it is in line with "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He's everywhere." He even paddles a canoe in the bayous of southern Louisiana, as shown on a card from this other first cousin living in New Orleans.

Midway of the card study, I stop to have a mug of the late Joy Johnson's recipe for hot Joy Juice, together with a lacy oatmeal cookie, a recipe gleaned from the local daily newspaper. One has to stay nourished and alert to deal with the new millennium. Finally we've arrived at the year 2000. For the last 200 years or so, we've been saying, "Nearly 2000 years in the little town of Bethlehem there was ..."

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.