During the Yuletide season, it’s not about the gift, but the thought that counts. But with PBSP’s Christmas cards, the cardgiver’s thoughts especially matter because his gift is something that endures.
The beginning of the Christmas card tradition is both noble and intimate. Sir Henry Cole of London wanted to make his friends aware of the need to help the destitute during the holidays, yet he had so many greetings to send that handwriting each one is impossible. Thus, in the holidays of 1843, Sir Henry commissioned the painting of a card showing the feeding and clothing of the poor. "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You" were the very first words in the commercially distributed cards. With the custom growing in popularity, designs vary from flowers, birds, snow scenes, fir trees, glowing fireplaces to timeless settings such as children around a Christmas tree, Nativity, nature scenes and carolers singing in the snow. But for the thousands who have received a PBSP Christmas card, the delight goes beyond the cover artwork depicting the Filipino Christmas.
Sixteen years ago, PBSP launched the Christmas Cards Fund Campaign to generate funds finances for the reforestation efforts in the Central Cebu watersheds, or the hillylands. The hillylands stretch to approximately 30,000 hectares of mountainous areas or the forestlands, which collects and drains rainwater essential for household and industrial uses. At that time, its forest cover was less than 10%, thus reforestation was important otherwise Metro Cebu’s water resource would be threatened. Simultaneously, PBSP implemented a poverty reduction program with environmental rehabilitation as one of the main components. The presence of the Christmas cards had proven to be a viable fund generation strategy. For the card recipient, the wisdom is profound and simple, and the message of each card says it all – “In this season of love and harmony, a gift is planted in your name, a gift that will last for generations.”
At the onset of the campaign, PBSP commissioned the services of professional artists to produce artworks with Filipino tradition of celebrating Christmas vis-à-vis environmental awareness and consciousness. It later on evolved to be an environmental awareness campaign where elementary students are challenged to produce artworks by participating in design contests conducted every year. From then on, more and more people were involved in sharing their vision about Christmas and the environment.
Through the years, PBSP’s cards are not just expressions of warm and tender thoughts of a child to his mother, a girl to her best friend, or a young professional to his mentor, but they are corporate gifts that express gestures of goodwill of a company to his clients and business partners. Some also choose to have their own exclusive designs bearing their customized greetings and corporate brands. But the message still remains, and always has been for the past 15 years – a tree for each card received, a gift that will never stop growing in the years to come.
Sun Star Daily, one of Cebu’s major community papers, called the PBSP Christmas Card “a card with a conscience”. The fund campaign has generated a net income of over P2 million used to plant approximately 200,000 trees, thereby reforesting 80 hectares in the hillylands. In 2001, the campaign won the Anvil Award of Merit by the Public Relations Society of the Philippines for Effective Campaign for Environmental Conservation and Protection.
This article originally appeared in the 18th VAMM issue of PBSP's COMPACT Magazine.
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