Cards

I can't remember the last time I ever sent someone a Christmas card. Sure I leave out an envelope to grease the mail carrier and the person who delivers my news paper, but I never even consider Christmas cards. Even when I get one in the mail, I always wonder what it is and why people are sending me a late birthday card and then I realize that people still send out Christmas cards. So far this year I received three cards.

I recall what a big thing Christmas cards were to my mother. She actually hated them, but to her it was a competition. She would shell out big cash for the nicest, most expensive cards every year. She actually visited the stationary store in September and spent an afternoon looking over cards and then order her cards way in advance. She didn't want to depend on what was in stock in November.

She kept a book of addresses just for cards. She would mark off people who sent her one and they would get one in return, but if she didn’t get one from a regular sender, she would cross them off her list.

Every card she got was displayed in the house in the event one of the senders visited; they would see that their card was important enough to display. She did take great joy in crossing people off the list. Every couple of years she could reduce her card purchases by a box or two.

One day she just got fed up with it all and stopped buying and sending cards all together. She is now 87 and spends her winters in Hawaii. Every once in a while I’ll get a Christmas card from her with a Christmas in Hawaii theme. I never send her one, but she expects that. It was a habit I never adopted, nor will I. If I were to, I would send out rude anti Christmas cards, but why piss off even more people than I already piss off.