But every year we face the same dilemma. Who gets one and who doesn’t? What names do we drop from our list and who will we add this year? Of the ones who get a card, who gets a personal note and who doesn’t? Who gets a family picture, who gets pictures of the kids, and which cards go without any photos?

It’s a hard decision to make. And what makes it harder is that we face the same decision every year. While we do not allow money to be the primary factor in deciding who is on our list or not, it’s also true that as the price of cards and the cost of postage has risen over the years we have become more and more selective – but we still sent about 85 cards this year.

Over the years, we have developed a set of criteria for our list, but it isn’t an exact science by any means. Maybe you’ve tried to apply some of the same criteria to your Christmas Card lists, too.

• If we hear from someone some time during the year, we usually keep their name on the list.
• On the other end of the spectrum, if we see people regularly – once a week or more often – we normally don’t send a card to them. They get personal greetings instead – or maybe even a gift.
• Brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and grandchildren get cards. Nieces and nephews don’t.
• School teachers and bus drivers get cards. Principles don’t.
• People from the church we’re currently serving generally don’t get them – but we answer with cards to people from churches where we used to serve.

And there are always exceptions! Anyone who looked at our list would wonder if we had any set criteria. In fact, if you listened in to a conversation we had this week about a couple of the names, you’d wonder how justifiable our decisions have been.

But it’s our list. We decide who is on it and who is not.

You can offer all the advice you want about how to ‘scrub’ the list to make it shorter, but our own emotional commitment to some people is going to make a more significant impact on what the list looks like than anything else.

We go through a similar exercise when it comes to gifts. Who gets a gift? How expensive will the gift be? If I send one to my sister, do I need to send one to my brother, too? Do they need to be of comparable value? What about nieces and nephews?

The hardest years for me have been when I’ve done my shopping early. On more than one occasion I was done before the first of December. And then all month long I wondered if I got enough. What if it wasn’t the right gift? I would second guess myself and end up getting still more gifts.

How do you know when you’re done unless you finish on Christmas Eve and don’t have anymore time to shop?

One way to know is to make a list. I start my list early, but I start my list of people and presents so I know when I’ve completed my shopping.

Sometimes that list has to be adjusted. We have two extra children this year, so we changed our list. I had planned to take our grandson shopping for a gift for his mother and ended up with a present for his mother, his grandparents, his cousin, his step dad and his dad – in other words, Keith changed my list, too.

Like a Christmas Card list, gift lists need to be reviewed regularly. Sometimes we need to add to them; sometimes we need to delete from them.

That purging process is difficult. The process of ‘making a list, checking it twice,’ is a full time job for Santa because it’s not easy to do. It isn’t easy to refine our list and make it perfect – especially if our criterion is based on whom deserves a gift!

In Malachi, we are warned about the selection process that God uses. Everyone receives an invitation to the great party at the end [continue]