4 Ways You Can Continue to Use Your Christmas Cards After Christmas

by Alicia Bodine, Contributing Writer

Image ©Danyel3096; Public Domain. Commons.Wikipedia.org

It seems such a waste to receive so many Christmas cards in December and then throw them away come January 1st. Here are some ideas that can help you get more use out of your yearly Christmas cards.

​1. I once had a family tell me that they held a holiday Christmas Card contest. They planned a night to judge the most creative card, most decorative, and card that displayed the best humor. Not only was this a great time for the family to spend bonding together, but the Christmas cards got more than just a glance before getting tossed into the trash can.

2. My family takes great joy in using our Christmas cards for decorations. We place each one along the tops of the doorways on the inside of our home. It is fun to watch each entryway fill with Christmas cards. We just tape them up, but you can just as easily put a hole through each card with your hole puncher, slide a string through the hole, and hang them up anywhere in your house.

​3. After we finish using our Christmas cards as decorations, we take them down and place them in a basket. The basket is then set in the middle of the dining room table. Each night at dinner we take a card out of the basket and pray for the family that sent us the card. Every family needs prayer, and what better way to thank your family for thinking of you at Christmas time than to pray for them. We get over 80 cards per year, and by using one card per night we can keep the cards around until March.

4. Finally, we use our Christmas cards in our scrapbooks. Christmas cards have creative greetings and warm wishes that you can cut out and paste with your pictures. You can also clip out the awesome Christmas scenes or Christmas characters to use with the Christmas pages of your scrapbook. One year I did a scrap booking Bible Study. The page of Thankfulness I did entirely with my Christmas cards. I was thankful for my family and friends who had taken the time to think of us that year.

There is no end to what you can do with your Christmas cards if you put some thought into it. Go ahead and be creative. You may be surprised to see where it leads you.

This article was previously posted on the Yahoo Contributor Network.