Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023 | 2 a.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
Six years ago, I was helping teach a fourth-grade cursive handwriting class at an elementary school near my home. I remembered how fun it was to learn cursive when I was a kid — not. It was a rote exercise in writing the same letters and words over and over again until they were all nicely connected in a beautiful cursive sentence — and I saw the boredom on the kids’ faces.
I chose to use a line about saying “please and thank you” from my book, “The Legacy Letters.” Maybe that would inspire them — not. As I loop-de-looped another word on the whiteboard, I suddenly had a gorgeous, beautiful epiphany of an idea burst into my brain. I blurted out — “How about we make a giant handwritten thank-you letter the size of a football field?” Suddenly, I was the master of all things cool. I had broken through the boredom and the repetition. Their faces beamed in delight. “When do we start?” And now the joy of inspiration immediately turned to the shocking reality of walking my talk, because that’s what adults are supposed to do.
Six years later, the talk got walked. It wasn’t the size of a football field, but it was the size of a high school basketball gym. It took over 30 rolls of 3-foot butcher paper, hundreds of feet of tape, umpteen pizza and boxes of cookies, countless kids and about three months of planning and creating.
The World’s Largest Handwritten Thank You Letter was rolled out Tuesday, the inaugural day of National Thank You Letter Day, in front of 600 screaming happy-to-be-alive kids at Continental Elementary School in Green Valley, Ariz.
It was sent in the World’s Largest Envelope, postmarked with the World’s Largest Stamp and sent via the U.S. Postal Service to our sister school nearby. For our effort, those kids and I received a Guinness World Record and were guests on “The Kelly Clarkson Show.”
Today, I continue to write thank-you letters. And say please and thank you regularly. As special as that first National Thank You Letter Day was to me, I believe every day should be National Thank You Letter Day, and National “Please” Day, and National “Can I Help You?” Day.
Having celebrated the sixth annual National Thank You Letter Day earlier this week, and with Thanksgiving right around the corner, today is a great day to remind ourselves of the simple and powerful act of sending a letter of thanks to someone we care about or love who has affected our lives.
What’s the best way to write a thank-you letter? Write from your heart! A thank-you letter is a genuine act of gratitude that we all love to receive. It’s just another way of spreading kindness and civility throughout the world.
How long does the letter have to be? The beauty of a thank-you letter is that it can be any length. From a couple of lines to a couple of paragraphs or longer.
While it might be quicker to send a text or email, there is nothing better than receiving a letter from someone. The time we put into writing a letter is given to another person. And if the greatest gift we have in life is our time on this planet, then giving the gift of our time to another is powerful beyond measure.
As I wrote in my book:
“Letters are real. They are made of paper and the paper holds the time that you place into the words. And the paper can be held. It is human-sized and made for hands to hold and touch — and feel. It is not electronic or made of electrons. And because letters are real, they can be saved and cherished for a long time. And you can always feel the person in the way they write — even long after they are gone. And that is a profound legacy to leave someone.”
We need thank-you letters now more than ever. Like the kids who beamed with happiness on that first National Thank You Letter Day — and yes, even wrote thank-you letters to their parents and loved ones, we too can bring a smile to someone’s face with this simple, beautiful, powerful act of writing a thank-you letter. So don’t wait. One letter. A few minutes. A lifetime of gratitude and thanks received.
Carew Papritz is an award-winning author, filmmaker and global advocate for literacy and learning.
