Regifting the greetings of others: Glenn Rikard’s Christmas card boxes are full of memories

By Chelsea Retherford | Living 50 Plus

Eleven years ago, Glenn Rikard attended the funeral of Gladys Eley Harper, where he was inspired to pick up a Christmas tradition that his late friend had set in motion years earlier.

Mrs. Harper, who had been a resident at the Lauderdale Christian Nursing Home for 10 or 15 years before her death, had saved each and every Christmas card she’d ever received, Rikard explained. Eventually, she began constructing tiny, decorative memory boxes out of those cards.

“People would bring her cards, and then she’d make the little boxes out of them, and then she gave them to everybody — the teller at the bank, the cashier running the register at the grocery store, you know, all those sorts of things. When she passed, at her service, they had a basket bigger than this one,” Rikard said, gesturing to a large basket filled to the brim with Christmas card boxes of his own making.

“It was full of little boxes,” he continued telling the story behind his inspiration. “They invited everyone in attendance to take one. So, I took a little box, and it served as my pattern.”

When he got the box home, Rikard deconstructed it.

“Mrs. Harper did not glue hers, which made it convenient for me, because I could take it apart to see how it was made and then put it back together again,” he said, demonstrating on another box he’d recently shaped. “This is all you have to do to take it apart. Now, I do glue some of mine to make them more permanent, more substantial. You can hang them on the Christmas tree, and they don’t fall apart.”

The glue is one minor difference between Rikard’s boxes and Harper’s creations. The box he selected to take home was number 12,444. He knows because Harper numbered and initialed each box she made.

Now, Rikard also numbers, dates and initials his creations. Picking one up to show off and pass along, he selected a shimmering gold one featuring a white dove with “Peace on Earth” in cursive type. On the back is his handwritten memento — “#1104,” made Sept. 7, 2023, and initialed, GR.

Of course, he’s made a few more hundred since the fall of 2023, but he admits he’s still a far cry from Harper’s final count, which was over 15,000.

Since Rikard picked up the hobby a decade ago, friends, family members and colleagues have begun donating stacks of Christmas cards they’ve received over the years to contribute to Rikard’s pile of materials.

He feels he’s often gifted twice as he rummages through his collection of old cards. Sometimes, he comes across the name of an old friend he hasn’t seen in a while. Sometimes, it’s a message from a card he’s received years ago.

“I think it was last year I was demonstrating how to do this to the Colbert County Tourism Board,” Rikard recalled. “I opened a card to begin, and Susann Hamlin said, ‘Oh, I sent that card to so-and-so!’

“That person had saved it and given it to me, and it had just happened that I had it right there and had begun making a box out of it. So, we finished the box, and then I gave it back to Susann.

“I make all kinds of these boxes, and sometimes you run across one that has a short, sweet and simple message in it. Others — like I have family members who will take up the entire blank sided page to write a message,” Rikard added.

“People buy these for $1 or $2, and I give a lot of them away like Mrs. Harper did. Sometimes I’ll mention, ‘I’m sorry they are not new cards,’ but people say, ‘No, no, we love the messages.’

“Really, it’s part of the gift that we give, and that Christmas message gets regifted to the person it’s passed on to.”

Rikard often waxes nostalgic whenever he’s crafting the Christmas boxes, and not just because he’s sifting through old greetings from friends. His chosen workspace, a country cabin back in the woods of Colbert County, was his childhood home.

This little retreat he’s restored is where his love for crafting began.

A small room in the back of the cabin contains a large collection of hand-stitched quilts — some he’s made and others he’s collected over the years with a few dating back to the 1800s.

Rikard said he began quilting when he was about 10 years old, but the quilts and the Christmas card boxes aren’t the only handmade crafts tucked away in the cottage. Rikard also has a room dedicated to his hobby of basket weaving.

The smallest of the baskets, no bigger than a walnut hull, were made as a small shelf decoration, or to hang as a charm from a necklace. Others, like his egg baskets, are large enough to carry the hundreds of Christmas card boxes he has yet to give away.

When asked where his love for working with his hands comes from, he answers without hesitation.

“Well, it comes from my mother. There’s no doubt about it,” he said.

Though both of his parents, Wilmer and Lula Mae, have passed, Rikard still feels close to them working in the house they made into a home in the 1940s.

It’s a cozy space he sometimes shares with friends and family, hosting holiday dinners and other special events to a small crowd in the restored kitchen. Even when Rikard is there alone, he said it’s a warm inviting space to spend hours each week, working on his latest project, whether it’s caning chairs, weaving baskets, stitching together a quilt top, cutting out paper snowflakes, or folding Christmas cards into decorative boxes.

“I play a lot. My wife is convinced that I play a lot,” he said with a smile. “I think I was interested in pretty things and creating those kinds of things from a young age, and it’s just something that never went away. I’m as busy as I want to be, and I enjoy every minute of it.”

Read More: Christmas Card Box Tutorial