Writing Letters and Emails

What is the difference between an email and a letter? It is time. Who takes the time to write proper letters today?
Remember in Jane Austen´s "Pride and Prejudice", as Lizzie gets finally two mislead letters of her sister and her aunt, very discret, tells her to take an hour to read them, she would in the meantime go for a walk. Time indeed.

I for all communicate nowadays much more via email than via letter - which the other day struck me as a pity. I am not even a great telephone person.
I used to write quite a lot and used to keep letters I liked and cherished. I still do, but the letters nowadays are so few, that it is always a great delight to receive a proper one. A mail you do not receive neither keep in the same way - it is, in the best of cases, stored away in a folder and then you forget about it. Nor do you re-read a mail so many times as you would a letter...  also very dificult to take a mail with you in your handbag. A printed version is so un-chic.There is no element of the sensual touch of paper and the joy of going to the letterbox and finding a nice envelope..

I do regret, that I have thrown away letters, which today I would have loved to read again - in my older age I would perhaps have detected things in those letters, I did not see when I was young. But alas, as many of us move around the world and the need to let things go and behind, we have thrown out many letters.
So, for me it will be difficult to be retraced in letters and in my correspondence, should the need arise to write my biography in the year 2145!

But there is still a bastion of writing, quite alive: Christmas Cards. Still the anticipation of Christmas is mostly the expectation and wait for the yearly flood of Christmas Cards - I do confess, it is for me personally the best part of Christmas - you just jump to the postbox every morning, curious to see who has written and how to their children look now, what their news are and if all is well. It is also a means of keeping in touch on a yearly basis - helps so much then to call, if you should happen to  be in Milano and have over the last 20 years not met, but have had every year that  faithful Christmas Card with Children, Parents and Dogs - great way of keeping in touch and great way of not inhibiting getting in touch again.
(Ok, I admit, it is a bit weird, writing about Christmas Cards in the middle of summer, but beware, Christmas is round the corner!)

I still write letters - but more to the older generation than to the younger. Which is a pity. If the young do not get letters, they do not have to learn to reply and a whole culture is getting lost in the process. I am always delighted, if a godchild writes to thank for a parcel which arrived for a birthday or any other occasion. But many godchildren do not even thank any longer for the gifts. Nor do they take care of their old aunts... My children are not better than others, it is always a fight to get them writing.

I vow to get back to letter writing - also as it is a very calming affair to do - you think differently if you write a letter. It is more fun, more joy and also more respect than a mail, it seems to me. So, here I go: will write more letters!!

Last but not least: get that handwriting of yours exercised again.