Want to help a hero during the holidays? You can do so by buying or--better yet--making by hand a Christmas or holiday card. Address it "Dear Service Member," sign it with your name, and send it to the address below. Please be sure to read the full guidelines listed.
This would make a great holiday project for a class, or for your children this coming weekend! If you make some cards, take pictures and share them with this story, so that others might get some ideas!
Not sure how to make a card? Here are some tips from About.com, along with links for Christmas and New Year's quotations and sayings.
About.com Quotations guide, Simran Khurana, has a wealth of great quotations on her site. There are quotations here for many occasions and rubber stampers will find plenty of interesting ideas and inspiration amongst her articles. Simran has listed some of her own favorites, as well as many other top Christmas quotations in these articles:
- Quotations suitable for Christmas Cards
- Funny Christmas Quotations
- Christmas Poems and Quotations
- Merry Christmas Quotations
Simran has also published some other great quotations that are suitable for use over the holiday season and these include:
Here is the information from the Red Cross website:
Each year the American Red Cross provides assistance to more than 2 million service members and many of our nation’s 24 million veterans. We support military families, military and veterans hospitals and provide emergency communications across the globe. And once a year, we get the joy of delivering holiday cards to veterans, military families and active-duty service members at hospitals and installations around the world.
The cards and personal messages, sent by tens of thousands of Americans, provide a welcome “touch of home” for our troops during the holiday season.
Visit our YouTube channel to see Red Cross volunteers distributing cards and messages in previous years: Holiday Mail for Heroes YouTube playlist.
Each year we collect cards between October and early December and then distribute them at military installations, veterans hospitals, and in other locations.
Throughout the year, you can make a difference with a monetary gift to Help Military Families through the Red Cross. Your donation can help change a military family’s life. Donate Now.
There are several ways to be part of the Holiday Mail for Heroes program. In addition to sending cards on your own, you may want to start making plans to host card signing parties or card making parties. Here are a few guidelines to help you on your way:
Card Guidelines:
Every card received will be screened for hazardous materials by Pitney Bowes and then reviewed by Red Cross volunteers working around the country.
Please observe the following guidelines to ensure a quick reviewing process:
- Ensure that all cards are signed.
- Use generic salutations such as “Dear Service Member.” Cards addressed to specific individuals can not be delivered through this program.
- Only cards are being accepted. Do not send or include letters.
- Do not include email or home addresses on the cards: the program is not meant to foster pen pal relationships.
- Do not include inserts of any kind, including photos: these items will be removed during the reviewing process.
- Please refrain from choosing cards with glitter or using loose glitter as it can aggravate health issues of ill and injured warriors.
- If you are mailing a large quantity of cards, please bundle them and place them in large mailing envelopes or flat rate postal shipping boxes. Each card does not need its own envelope, as envelopes will be removed from all cards before distribution.
All holiday greetings should be addressed and sent to:
Holiday Mail for Heroes
P.O. Box 5456
Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456
The deadline for having cards to the P.O. Box is Friday, December 7th.
Holiday cards received after this date cannot be guaranteed delivery.
