www.theamericanconservative.com
The Lonely Joys of Christmas Cards
Culture
The Lonely Joys of Christmas Cards
Americans are losing the habit of putting pen to card and stamp to envelope.
(Photo credit should read OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images)
In the spirit of the old philosophical quandary about whether a tree felled in a forest makes a sound if there is no one on hand to hear it, I present the following question for your consideration: If a Christmas card is sent but neither acknowledged nor replied to in kind, can it still be considered received?
Over the years, I have had ample opportunities to consider this conundrum. Following the example of my parents, who were enthusiastic Christmas card senders, I first began sending my own Christmas cards when I was a teenager. While the sending of Christmas cards is surely its own reward, I readily acknowledge that few do so in absence of the hope of receiving Christmas cards back. So, ceding to the unhappy reality that few of my peers were likely practiced in the art of placing a stamp on an envelope, my Christmas card lists skewed older: I tended to send cards to relatives (grandparents, aunts, uncles) and friends of my parents.
For a long time, my calculated approach proved largely successful: Each season, I might send eight to ten cards, and I might receive five to seven cards back — something like that. This represented a reasonable return on my investment, which amounted to little more than a box of cards, a sheet of stamps, and a few hours of putting to use one of my few obvious skills (a gift for lettering acquired during my youthful days as an aspiring cartoonist).
As the years went on, I broadened my Christmas card list to include professional colleagues, including fellow writers or editors, as well as the occasional celebrity with whom I might have come into contact. I have sent Christmas cards to the movie director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon), about whom I wrote and edited several books. For many years, the center held: Within a week or so of mailing my annual allotment of cards, my mailbox filled up with colorful square envelopes containing heavy card stock to go along with the electric bill and grocery-store coupon book.
Alas, at some point over the last decade, I began noticing diminishing returns: Few of my Christmas cards went completely unacknowledged, but on more occasions than I might care to admit, a recipient sent an email thanking me for my card instead of sending a card back.
Nonetheless, I persist. Each year, I carefully consider the best Christmas cards on the market (Crane usually wins out) and the postage that most accurately reflects my sensibility or views. Last year, I picked up a sheet of three-ounce stamps of author Saul Bellow, and this year, I will undoubtedly make use of the newly issued stamps of conservative godfather William F. Buckley Jr. Of course, I concede that I am holding onto a form of communication as antiquated as carrier pigeons and landline telephones. Why, then, do I persist with this increasingly frustrating practice?
It goes back to my parents, who loved sending Christmas cards and — natch — were thrilled when they received some back. My mother, especially, was a sentimentalist in the matter: Each year, she set aside a single card, penciled in the year in which it was sent, and stowed it away in a box. Somehow, in the course of their long lives and many moves, my parents held onto that box and, eventually, a second box. Those boxes are now in my possession, and I can easily track my parents’ comings and goings — their ups and downs — by sifting through all those cards.
The earliest Christmas card is from 1966, the year my parents were married. This card was custom-printed — my parents’ names were typed beneath the inside greeting — and they continued ordering custom-printed cards for several years thereafter. From 1969 through 1971, perhaps wanting to save money amid the holiday season, they seem to have relied on less expensive boxed Christmas cards, but their preference for custom-printed cards reemerged in 1972, when they sent a beautiful card featuring a holly tree and the following lovely accompanying text: “Of all the trees that are in the wood the holly bears the crown.”
The following year — 1973 — my parents ordered custom-printed Christmas cards from Neiman Marcus, the first of many such orders from that fabled department store. My working assumption is that each year they did so must have been a good year, job-wise.
In 1983, the year of my birth, my parents sent an especially beautiful Christmas card whose front was embossed with illustrations of various emblems of the season: candy canes, a rocking horse, a pair of figure skates, and such. Inside, there was the following reassuring message: “Christmas is remembered joys.” For the first time, my name appeared with my parents at the bottom. You can appreciate why I cherish these boxes of old, forgotten cards.
And so the Christmas cards continued to be sent year after year. My mother sent her first card solo in 2010, the year she became a widow, and she sent her last card in 2022. Because she died in September 2023, my mother did not send a card that Christmas. By then, I was the sole Christmas card sender in my family. Come what may, I am not about to give it up now.
The post The Lonely Joys of Christmas Cards appeared first on The American Conservative.
New Posts (Home)
ChatBox
Popular Posts 
Game Zone
Top PodCasts
