To anyone out there who may be reading this, I want to wish you a very, merry Christmas…no insult or offense intended. When someone of the Christian faith wishes you a merry Christmas, it is nothing but with the best intent. It is a wish full of love and joy and peace and blessing.
If you are a teacher, I hope you gave yourself the best Christmas gift ever…the gift of having all of your thank-you notes written before you left school for the last time for winter break. It is a wonderful burden to have, don’t get me wrong. I am always grateful when my students’ parents have been so generous that it is difficult to get thank-you notes written in response.
I don’t know if anyone else feels it, though, but with each gift comes this pressure to acknowledge it. You want the parent to know their gift arrived safely and that you appreciated it. You also don’t want them to have to wait until after the new year begins to receive the acknowledgement.
I have almost never accomplished this feat, but I did this year! I think it helped that our classroom winter party was on a Friday, but we still had the following Monday and Tuesday to go to school before the break. Most of the parents who were going to give me a gift sent it on the day of the party. That gave me the whole weekend to work on my thank-yous. This time, I was even prepared for the one or two parents that sent their gift the following Tuesday. I had brought stationery with me to school, and while the school played “Polar Express” over its closed-circuit T.V. station and my children enjoyed the respite from schoolwork and festivities watching it, I sat at my desk and knocked out the last couple of notes, tucking them into their folders, which were already stowed away in their backpacks, ready to go home at a moment’s notice should (i.e. in hopes that) a parent request their child early for pick-up.
Most years, I don’t even have time to open my presents, let alone write a note about each one, before it is time for the students to go home. Year after year, I drag the presents home with me, open them there, make a dutiful list of who gave what, and then feel this cloud hanging over me until I can finally manage to find a day, usually sometime in the week after Christmas, to sit down and write my gratitude. Then comes the dilemma about whether or not to mail them. It’s so much easier to wait until school is back in session and slip the notes in their folders that go home each day. Although, it seems so belatedly half-hearted to send it after New Year’s that way, but on the other hand, you’ve already likely spent a fortune on a gift for each child, and that postage can really add up. Plus the added quandary about whether or not to include your home address or the school’s in the return address on the envelope haunts me. These days, I lean toward using the school’s no matter how impersonal. There are some parents that just shouldn’t know where I live, if you know what I mean.
So as you approach the holidays, whichever ones you may celebrate, may you fully enjoy each and every day of your brief break from your classroom, may you get lots of rest and recuperation, may all of your thank-you notes be written and in the hands of the thoughtful parent who went to the trouble of sending you a gift, (and may at least one of those gifts have been a sizable Visa gift card that you can spend any way you want)! 😉