Addressing Xmas Cards...

[Jinx]

What is the proper way to address a couple once the husband passes on? Suppose it once was Mr. & Mrs. Joe Smith. Should I still use his name as Mrs. Joe Smith? Or, is it more considerate to use her name now? (Mrs. Lucy Smith, for example.) How do you handle this when filling out your Xmas Cards?

• Jinx

[Lsura]

Ok, you got me to pull out my copy of Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, which means that I don’t have an online cite for this.

Her response to a question about addressing mail to a widow:

What bugs Miss Manners…is the prevalence of the belief…that a woman’s mode of address changes when her husband dies. It is simply not true by any standards. We use many forms of addressing married and unmarried women these days, but there is not now, and never has been in the history of etiquette, a distinction between a wife and a widow. A woman who was "Mrs. John Smith when her husband was alife still is…

So, however you addressed cards to her before he died is how you still address the card to her (without his name).