Why I Love Snail Mail

There's something enchanting about receiving a letter in the mail. It's one of my favorite things in the world and I shall do my best to convince you of its transcendence in this post.

~History~

I hope you all know that at one point, mail was the only possible form of communication. Other than speaking in person, of course. I am struck by this every time I watch a Jane Austen-era film. They had to write letters to know anything about people that didn't live within five miles of them. I would have loved living in that era!

If you go really, really far back, letters were delivered by messengers on foot. Ancient and early church eras all relied on hand delivery. What if your letter was going all the way across the known world? Then you or your best friend took it yourself. Think about the letters from the Bible. Half of the trouble the apostles met was on journeys to deliver letters to churches. Stamps have simplified things, yes?

After that, people got smarter and began delivering on horseback: the Pony Express. This is where the snazzy vintage mail bags come in. This method was much faster, obviously, and worked out of a post office, so that no messenger was riding all across the world. This did include the likelihood of losing a letter in the mail, but it was still rare. If you had to mail a letter far, it could still take weeks or months to reach its destination.

Then came stagecoach. Still horses, but room for much larger packages. People got to the point where they didn't only want to mail letters! They wanted to mail things. Like books. Yes, book mail was a thing, even back then and it makes me happy.

And then came the development of government run postal offices in every town and city to streamline mail delivery. Address the letter, stick the proper postage on it, and voila. I can get a letter from Texas to California in two days when I'm lucky. Services like United Parcel Service (UPS) and FedEx came into existence to help deliver large packages. You see a lot of them around the beginning of school and Christmas time.

So now you know . . . not that you didn't already :)

~Benefits~

There are benefits to being one of those letter writers, you know. I came up with three.

First, it helps your handwriting. Penmanship has really fallen by the wayside in recent decades of public education and it's sad. It used to be one of the necessary skills of life to write in scrolling cursive with ink and nib. No longer. Many schools don't even see the point in teaching both print and cursive. Regardless, everyone has their own style of writing and you develop it through use. Legibility also comes through practice, so this is a great thing to do! No skimping by typing, please.

Second, I love that it not only lets me keep up with long distance friends (because I despise phone calls!!!), but it also makes me take note of what's happening in my life. Kind of like the wrap-up posts we all write. You notice big events throughout the month so you can tell people. And because writing things down is supposed to help you remember them, think about how much better you will remember your own life details just because you wrote a letter! Of course, if you journal, that's the best way. But I've never gotten into that discipline.

Third, it's an enjoyable responsibility. When you have a pen pal that actually writes back timely and you enjoy hearing what the other has to say, it builds excitement! You want another letter in the mail with all the answers to your questions. So what do you do? You write a letter to them with answers to all their questions. The pressure comes from knowing that someone is interested and waiting on you. It's really quite fun!

~Do It~

I've had numerous pen pals over the years. At the moment, I have two girls my age that I write. I started because our parents are friends and we hardly get to be around each other. While we write less and less frequently as we get older, it's so fun to get a letter from one of the two girls. I believe I've been pen pals with one for over 5 years and the other for about 3 years. I would have no relationship with these girls and have no idea how much we do or don't have in common without our letters! And our parents enjoy it, too, because they get to find out about each other's families vicariously.

This is where I tell you to go and write a letter. I don't care if you have a pen pal or not. Write a letter. Right now. And I mean get a nice flowing pen and a piece of notebook paper. Then stick a stamp on it and put it in your mailbox with the flag up.

It doesn't have to be 8 pages long (I have been known to do this...). It doesn't even matter what you decide to include. One of my pen pals tells me all about her activities and life happenings that excite her, what her plans are, and what God is doing in her life. The other tells keeps me updated on her life events which mostly include farm animals: which ones they've sold, kept, bought, and when they're moving closer to us. Those two girls write very different letters. But I still enjoy both of them because they're so uniquely them.

So write away! Be you. Ask your parents if they know any old friends of theirs who have a child around your age and hunt down their address. You never know what could happen. And if nothing happens? You still wrote that letter and they still read it. You'll never know how much it made their day :)

        

~~~~~

So there you have it. An entire post on snail mail, just as promised :) I hope this was somewhat inspiring! Forgive the rambling. I could look at pictures like this all day, couldn't you? Go write that letter!