I Am a Man of Christmas Carding Virtue!

Okay, so I obsess a bit about Christmas cards.  I come by it honestly — my mom is a diligent Christmas carder.  Call it pathology, call it OCD, I just feel a keen obligation to  send out Christmas cards each holiday season.

(Note: just like I’m very laid-back viz my own religious internal imperatives vs what other folks choose to practice, I don’t consider my obsession with Christmas cards to be an indictment of anyone who doesn’t share said obsession.  I just feel like sending out cards is part of my holiday social obligations and, honesty, my pleasure to hook up with folks with whom I don’t correspond outside of Christmas.)

I usually have a variety of cards — at least two, classified as “religious” and “secular.”  Yes, I acknowledge that some folks don’t celebrate Christmas (or this season) as a Christian holiday, and other folks do.  To me, that means two sets of cards, just like you’d have multiple outfits for different occasions.

Now that I’ve confessed that sin, let me confess another: I write Christmas Letters.

Yes, those horrid, wretched, self-indulgent, gag-worthy missives describing the past year from our internal family perspective, from waxing lyrical about Junior’s grades, to snarkily boasting about  that cruise to the Bahamas, to boundarilessly entertaining correspondents with the details of Aunt Gertrude’s kidney stones.

My thinking on Christmas Letters is this:

• It’s a useful end-of-year review for me.
• I try to send it just to folks who might be wondering how things are going with us.
• I don’t take it too seriously.

The letters go to folks who are (a) not close friends and family [who presumably already know all this stuff], but (b) relatives or friends who’d actually give a darn (I think) about reading a one-page summary of the year’s health, travel, work, and home improvement events.  (I keep the letter to one page long; my life isn’t interesting enough to go beyond that.)

(For the edification of all who are not in the above list, I’ll be publishing said letter here has a blog post some time later this month.  I’m sure that gives everyone an added reason to live.)

Christmas Cards this year was also a bit of a catch-up event.  As you may recall (or would know if you read our Christmas Letter, dagnabbit), last year’s cards were interrupted by … well … Margie’s broken ankle and the hilarity that ensued about that.  I think I ended up sending an apologetic email around instead, and considered it good.

(We actually got gifts bought last year — largely due to Margie being unable to do much else than sit on the sofa-bed and sort through catalogs and order things.  Of course, she was on pain meds, which is why the odd gaps, doubling-up, and occasional mis-selection of  gifts we chalk up to the “Percocet Christmas.”)

Anyway, this year we had a plethora of cards to choose from — a large supply of three different cards.  Of course, I also had the challenge of, for the first time, using an export out of Google Contacts as the Christmas Card list, plus using Open Office as a mail-merger for producing labels.

On the other hand, we now have a color printer, which means that the Christmas Letter and the Twelfth Night invite could have color without using rubber stamps.

Ah, yes, the Twelfth Night invite.  We do a holiday party each year (that’s Margie’s “she comes by it honestly” contribution to our holiday period mania). But given how zany December is, we do it in January, hence referring to it as a Twelfth Night party (though we never do it by the official Twelfth Night).  But one of the decision points that has to be made pre-cards is the date, and then invites need to be printed up for folks who are not in our immediate Gmail circle … and then the invite needs to be written up and then printed and then cut up (since we do half-sheets folded for the invite), and …

Oh, yeah, then after we stuff half our Christmas cards with the invites, we discover that I cunningly wrote up an invitation in December 2010 giving a party date of January 2010 (vs January 2011).  *sigh*

(Note for next year: Katherine noticed that the invitation was formally from Margie and me, and took umbrage at that. So Kay gets to be part of the invitation, just like she’s part of the Christmas Letter.)

So there’s a fair amount of prep that takes place before the card trigger that gets pulled:

• Buy cards (already done for this year)
• Buy stamps (thanks, Costco!)
• Decide on Twelfth Night date, then create Twelfth Night invites.
• Research Christmas Letter (i.e., review blog posts for the last year)
• Write Christmas Letter
• Refine list of folks to whom cards go.
• Figure out how to export said folks’ contact info and turn it into address labels.
• Create return address labels.

But once all that is done, the actual card work is (relatively) quick — it took me about four hours to inscribe each card, get it addressed, return-addressed, stamped, and out to the mailbox.  It would go faster if I didn’t write something in each card beyond just signing it for the family.  On the other hand, it would go slower if I hand-wrote each address, so there you go.

So all the cards for the season are complete, save anything we get in the mail from someone that we didn’t get a card from. Since, unless it’s wholly inappropriate, one definition of those to whom you should send cards is those from whom you receive cards.

Going back to the Christmas Letter, it occurs to me that, now that I have color printing, we can, if we get our act together on processing photos, include a picture or two of us in said letter.   Note that is a big “if” … I am woefully behind this year in reviewing and editing and labeling and uploading photos …

Anyway, that’s a long-about way of saying that I’ve sent out my Christmas Cards (i.e., they are in the mailbox with the flag up), and oh what a good boy am I.  Until I realize someone I missed that I oughtn’t have.

Now, about selecting and ordering Christmas gifts …