While looking for board games to play with family after Thanksgiving dinner, I found a tattered box of 1950s Christmas cards in one of my grandmother’s seldom opened chifforobes in the basement.It was not unlike the 1979 discovery of the first known Christmas card, a handmade greeting to King James I of England in 1611, more than a century-and-a-half before the founding of Baltimore. Except for me it was far more meaningful than ancient history.This year’s fourth Thursday of November feast was a small affair at the home of my former-mother-in-law, who’d been ailing. In her prime, Jean Rudacille was a third parent to our children, making enough lasagna to stretch from her old house in Dundalk to her last one in Perry Hall.For after dinner fun-and-games with coffee and pie (pumpkin and apple from Dangerously Delicious in Canton) I chose SORRY!, a classic introduced in the U.S. in 1933, the year “Nunny” was born. We never played, instead sitting near the matriarch who lay on the couch with pillows, close enough for her to hear our twice-told tales told twice more.My generation remembered shenanigans hilarious – making an igloo during the Blizzard of ’78 and turning it into a hookah lounge – and others somewhat alarming. We wondered about the baby boy that will grace our family in the New Year and how, right about this time last December, my mother passed.The changing of the guard to the melody of Auld Lang Syne has been in full swing in the Alvarez/Rudacille clan for several years now.Some of the stories were about how much Jean’s husband Ralph Lee Rudacille (1934-1999) loved Christmas. Known as Rudy in the world and “Poppy” to us, Ralph was born in the old Sparrows Point bungalows when the steel mills were a factory town. My father, also gone, maintained that keeping tradition was mostly work. Poppy did the work.“My father loved Christmas and took a week off every December to prepare,” said his daughter, Deborah Rudacille, who documented her family’s working history in the 2011 book Roots of Steel.“He’d sit at the dining room table to write out a tall stack of Christmas cards. Then he’d make dozens of Christmas cookies — sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip, pizzelles and the Italian anise cookies we called jeanettes,” said Deborah. “He learned to make homemade ravioli from my mother’s Italian relatives.”After Poppy died, she said, “my mother stopped sending Christmas cards.”My Italian grandmother’s final Christmas was 1975, likely the last time she used the box of cards I found in the basement. Gerald Ford was president, I was a teenager and stamps were a dime. The iconic postage of my childhood was a light blue 5-cent George Washington first class stamp.Legally blind, Grandmom made Christmas each year with the help of her Polish daughter-in-law, my Mom. They wrote out cards on the wooden table in the upstairs kitchen on Macon Street where I am putting this story together.Here’s what I remember most: Mom would read the name of the friend or relative outloud to my grandmother, there’d be a pause and then Grandmom would say, “I think they passed away.”“I think you’re right,” said Mom before scratching the name out of the address book – I can almost see her holding the pen – and going to the next one.Is there anything more final than being deleted from the Christmas card list?Gloria Alvarez (left) and Jean Rudacille, Christmas Eve several years ago. Credit: Macon Street BooksWriting cards each December – the month of her 1934 birth in Canton when it was a village of Polish-Catholic laborers – was one of the last things my mother and I did together. Our other pastime was watching Oriole games. When they won she’d shout “WE DID IT!” and when they lost it was always, “We’ll get’em next time.” She had more than a passing crush on Buck Showalter.The first mass produced Christmas cards were designed in 1843 by John Callcott Horsley with an illustration of a family giving a holiday toast: “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.” On either side, images of charity.This essay was prompted by the cardboard tray of long forgotten Christmas cards, perhaps more enchanting because they harken to times long gone.And this: I found several other cards signed last year by Mom, addressed by me and stamped a day or two before she went to the hospital and never mailed. I walked to the mailbox at the corner of Ponca and Fait and dropped them in, hoping that a greeting from a friendly ghost would bring a curious smile.I have loved sending and receiving mail since our fourth grade teacher had us write letters to foreign embassies in geography class. I was assigned Norway and, in addition to a cool map, received a tin of sardines. My career as a trafficker in all things that can be carried by the postal service was launched.I send “real mail” all year long, distributing passing thoughts and hard copies of photos from my parents’ albums to the sons and daughters of the people in the pictures, all deceased. Almost all of the pix were taken while friends are sharing a meal. I also have a cheap subscription service for monthly cards and letters, often snapshots taken with a disposable camera and affixed with postcard stamps that now cost 56-cents each.While I love Christmas, I am more fond of Thanksgiving (no religion, no gifts) and this year designed and mailed cards for the holiday of gratitude. Please pass the mashed potatoes and gravy.A Tale of Two Christmas cards: 21st century (left) and late 1950sThe Greatest GiftJean Milito Rudacille – born in Vandergrift, Pa., her first name carried through three generations of daughters in our family – died at home this past Sunday, December 15th – surrounded by family.That night I took a Greek meal from Karella’s on Newkirk Street to my son Manuel Jacob and his mother at her house in Hamilton. After rice pudding we watched It’s a Wonderful Life,  wondering if such a selfless time ever truly existed in this country while convinced that Mister Potter is spiritual kin to a certain someone.The movie has its origins in a Christmas card of sorts. In 1943, the writer Philip Van Doren Stern (1900-1984) wrote a short story called The Greatest Gift. Stern self-published the tale and mailed it to 200 friends that December.Eventually the story, said to have evolved from a dream, came to the attention of Hollywood and became – through the passion of director Frank Capra – a movie that sells out the Senator Theater every year.There’s a moment in the film that goes by fast, a quick shot of a sign on the wall of the Bailey Building & Loan: All You Can Take With You Is That Which You’ve Given Away.Jean Rudacille took our hearts with her.Jean Rudacille at her 90th birthday party in 2023 Credit: Jim BurgerRafael Alvarez is preparing to cross the Atlantic next month on a cargo ship to Antwerp, Belgium. He can be reached via [email protected]