I walked into Dallastown this morning and mailed over a dozen Christmas cards, all to people I don't know and have never met.\u00a0 Madonna and child stamps, my favorite Christmas stamps every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The recipients are all distant cousins, all descendants of my great-great-grandfather through his eldest three daughters<\/a>, two of whom I had no idea even had descendants until recently.\u00a0 As I researched my genealogy and wandered down lineages, I found names and obituaries.\u00a0 Those were clues, and clues led to more names and more data, like a puzzle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wrote out a short note in each card, scribbled a signature, and wrote a date.\u00a0 I didn't introduce myself or explain our link.\u00a0 It's distant enough that it hardly matters.\u00a0 If they want to get in touch, ask who I am and why I'm sending them a card, the address is on the envelope.\u00a0 Still, it's an act of random kindness from a stranger.\u00a0 Maybe one of the recipients had a difficult year or it going through a rough patch, and a kind word from a stranger will make a difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That's good enough for me. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I walked into Dallastown this morning and mailed over a dozen Christmas cards, all to people I don't know and have never met.\u00a0 Madonna and child stamps, my favorite Christmas stamps every year. The recipients are all distant cousins, all descendants of my great-great-grandfather through his eldest three daughters, two of whom I had noContinue reading “Christmas Cards for Strangers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[64],"class_list":["post-31104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-christmas","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}