Oh, Ms. Postman


I also sat down over the weekend and did my Christmas Cards. I am a big sender of cards, correspondingly, I should be a big getter of cards. I am not. I used to be an even less getter of cards but I finally did the math and decided that folks who never sent me cards should probably not be getting cards from me. This took a few years to sink in. I liked those people, those former classmates and co-workers. Every year I was like Hi! Merry Christmas! Remember Me?! apparently not. Sniff.

People should send me cards. I send great cards. I don’t go after Christmas shopping for turtle necks, I’m there for the Christmas Cards. I love going to the higher end department stores and specialty paper boutiques and scoring 85% off boxed cards. In the past I have made my own cards with my own photos, but that got expensive and so now I suck it up and use other peoples images. Sniff and Sigh.

Anyway. I did my cards. I noticed that the formerly expensive cards all said “Happy Holiday” or “Seasons Greetings” and the 40 for $2.99 all said “Merry Christmas”. Do rich people not wish each other Merry Christmas? And its not like these cards had Santa and and Hanukkah Harry so there wasn’t any bi-spiritual theme. Lots of snow, though. I guess snow is bi-spiritual. All the cards feature snow. As if it can’t be Christmas with out snow. As if… as someone who formerly lived in a non-snow zone this always pissed me off. Hello! It’s still Christmas if it’s green outside! We could ride our new bikes right away! Snow. Phhht.

I have to make card value judgments. Would this person appreciate the cool, happening holiday irony card or would the less ironic, but still nice card be good enough? this person gets a left over from last years way cool, happening card, this other person gets less cool but still happening card. Elderly relatives get the Holy-Family-In-The-Manager card regardless. I don’t think the elderly relatives would really get the Dog in Santa suit or Andy Warholesque Christmas Tree card. I mean, they might, but I know that I have other friends who would get it and think it was as cool as I did.


“Less cool” cards, they are all cool cards. I am a Card Snob and there is only so middle of the road I am willing to go. Some of people don’t hear from me at all for the rest of the year and I want what little communication we do have to at least be interesting or at the very least different from the other cards they get from the other people they only talk to once a year. I can’t afford to send everyone gifts, so I send everyone cards.

The folks at work, who for the most part will get selections from one or the other of the $2.99 box O’40 cards. It’s not that I am not close to them, it’s that there are so damn many of them and they don’t really need a Way Cool card from me. They need a card from me and pretty much only if they gave me a card first.

I had to buy the 40 for $2.99 cards because after Christmas last year I got really excited by the cards I bought. So excited I didn’t bother looking at how many I was getting. Not very many was how many I got. I needed more and I will not buy full price cards before Christmas unless I buy them way, way before Christmas. Like August – I’m not sick though , I don’t just arbitrarily buy more cool Christmas cards just to buy more cool Christmas cards. Unless. Unless, they are really, really, really cute. Like an Ikea Christmas card. I didn’t see any when we were there but I bet they make cute cards.