The Christmas Card

My local paper had a list of tips for sending Christmas cards. Tip # 1: Select cards suitable for the recipient’s beliefs. This means if you’re sending to a couple and one half is Jewish; don’t send a Christmas card, send a holiday card. The Christmas card selection in a store is huge, but, the Chanukah selection? Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

Tip # 2:  Make sure all names are spelled correctly. In some cases this doesn’t matter as I’ve received cards with the senders name only. Talk about an impersonal assembly line.

Tip # 3: Sends cards early so they can be displayed. I’ve gotten cards on Christmas Eve and after Christmas telling me I was an afterthought or they sent me one only because I sent them one.

Tip # 4: It’s ok to include a personal note, but keep it short as the days of the long, rambling newsletter is obsolete. Today, with Facebook everybody already knows your business, even if they don’t care or want to.

Giving Christmas cards can get out of control for just family members. When you get married and Christmas rolls around, you buy your spouse a card. If your spouse has family (most likely they will) you buy cards for their family members, now your in-laws.

Then you and spouse have a child and come Christmas you buy the baby a card even though they can’t read. You buy a card from your child to their awesome Daddy. Then you have a second baby which means more diapers and cards. Come Christmas you buy cards from one illiterate child to another. And now you buy one card for a great daughter and one for a great son. You and spouse buy cards for great daughter and son to give to their mommy or daddy. You buy cards for Wonderful grandma and grandpa from their wonderful grandchildren. Then you buy cards from your children to their Special Uncle which reads, ‘This card is to tell you how much you mean;’ of course they need the card to tell him because they can’t speak! They can’t speak and they can’t write!

After Christmas you buy and send cards to all who gave gifts. You get a card for the wonderful, special, awesome… and the insanity continues.