"Christmas Cards Outside The Family Circle" in Washington, DC, Christmas 2006 by Louise Porter-Cleaves (pen/stage name:Lisa Forestier)
From MemoryArchive
Who:Louise Porter-Cleaves (pen/atage name:Lisa Forestier) What:Christmas Cards Outside The Family Circle When:Christmas 2006 Where:Washington, DC
Last Christmas I decided, again, to change Christmas card policy.
I grew up in no different a way, I suppose, than most Christians and Christmas observers. Our first Christmas cards, for years and years and years, were sent within the family circle. Then neighbors, teachers, religious authorities, local celebrities, postman...
Including celebrities took much longer for me.
One of the best, if not THE best, example, came sometime at the end of the 1970s. I read an article by Washington, DC journalist Judy Bachrach in THE WASHINGTON STAR called "Philosopher Prince, Brand New". It was about a rising French intellectual star, Bernard-Henri Levy on the occasion of his visit to Washington, DC, the publication of his book LA BARBARIE A VISAGE HUMAIN in English as BARBARISM WITH A HUMAN FACE and a reception at THE NEW REPUBLIC magazine south of Dupont Circle.
(That marked the beginning of my consciousness of the name Bernard-Henri Levy. I began reading when one of my teachers at the Alliance Francaise de Washington, DC, Mme Claude Moisy -- wife of M Claude Moisy, then head of the Washington, DC branch of Angece-France Presse -- suggested I read what Levy there was in the library.)
He revealed in the course of the Bachrach interview that one of his first moments of consciousness of anti-semitism was when a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Christian boy in the neighborhood chided him for wanting to celebrate Christmas because, as a Jew, he couldn't do that.
I took the story to heart every time Christmas rolled around after that. Finally, one Christmas in the late-1980s early 1990s, I decided to send him and his wife (Arielle Dombasle) a Christams card c/o his publisher Grasset et Fasquelle. Well, really a Seasons Greetings card, the same style I was sending everyone during those times except for one or two super Catholics:white, sparkly background and liberal (not to say lurid) crimson/scarlet script.
They haven't written back yet. Meanwhile, the whole emotional exercise initiated wondrous things in my Christmas Christian growth.
Christmas 2006, after experimenting for several years with a cyber Christmas greeting for whomever, I reverted, etiquette-wise, back to the mid/late 1970s, hard copy (having joined the eco-friendly conversion of paper products in the meanwhile), focusing mostly on people I know but thinking differently about what celebrities bring into our lives and Christmas spirit.
