It's so fucking domesticated of me and everything is so tasteful and I'm such a fucking sell-out.
We sent out cards a couple years ago because it seemed fun and I had taken this picture of a stairwell but now we're on the lists of these relatives and it's like we have to keep sending them and the whole hedonic treadnoel and oh geez.
For the record, I would not be able to bring myself to send a card that deviated X-ward from "Seasons Greetings" or "Happy Holidays".
But even so I just feel so sickeningly sweet and ashamed of myself.
After having watched my parents be stressed for two months every year (from trying to get everyone dressed and corralled for Christmas photo in October to ordering the photos, to handwriting personal notes to 100-200 friends...) I made two resolutions that I have kept:
1. Only send cards to people you actively want to talk to.
2. Only send cards in years where you feel you have the emotional and time reserves to do so.
This has been remarkably successful in de-stressing the experience for me. However, it probably helps that I don't work in an industry where I'm expected to send cards for work, and I don't fret about whether people will think I am rude for not returning a card they've sent in the same year.
Do y'all ever wish feasting and merriment were actual feasting and merriment? I would imagine that back when economies were truly agrarian, living spaces tight, and it got cold and dark, you sat around and ate your surplus until it went bad, got drunk on the excess wheat and had sex. And that is why it was the happiest season of all, on the veldt.
I'm certainly doing the least-work possible version: pick out a photo template off Zazzle or Shutterfly or something, upload a photo of the kids being kid-like, type in addresses, and pay $$.
10: I think that would be deviating in a different direction from X-ward.
But it may well be a solution to the problem in 6.
DAMN. It appears that nowhere lets you upload a spreadsheet of addresses and sends them out on your behalf.
Part of me does want to pick one of these black, cobwebby Halloween designs and customize it to say Fuck Your Holidays. The Geebies.
There is some place that does that. My sister used it this year.
9 seems like a worst possible way to do it, like it's perpetuating the card-sending machine (Big Card) or something.
I've been trying to send more cards by mail in general (not holiday cards), on the theory that we all get too much email and getting a nice card in the mail feels nice. I also have a bunch of odd cards that I've acquired in various ways, mostly postcard sets, that I might as well use.
The closest I ever got to doing a holiday card was a few years ago when I was working at a design firm and was feeling all design-y, and I came up with a pretty cool photo that represented the new year and sent it out by email to a bunch of people. I have a weirdly specific fantasy of making my own holiday cards with, like, woodcut or linocut prints, but this hasn't happened yet. Oh, and by holiday cards I mean New Year's cards, because New Year's is the seasonal holiday that I can most get behind.
13: It means more if you make it look like you wrote part of it by hand.
19: We use one of those services to make the cards from a kid-pic, but we right "Happy Holidays from the Hicks" on each one.
19: Sorry. I go back and forth on this; on the one hand, some of my relatives would like it very much if I sent them holiday cards. You're doing a good thing, overall.
For several years now we've been doing this. Picking out the cards is fine; getting the addresses isn't too bad. Trying to write something vaguely meaningful, besides "Happy to you!" is several evenings where I would prefer to be undergoing dental surgery.
This year we're just going to make a card with a picture of us and the baby and a greeting. "Happy Holidays! Subtext: We're Too Fucking Busy Keeping This Baby Alive To Personalize"
Bah, HTML. "Happy <Whatever Holiday> To You".
"Happy Holidays! Subtext: We're Too Fucking Busy Keeping This Baby Alive To Personalize"
I hope this is the real actual greeting you use.
"This holiday season, please be advised that we have not moved and our offspring has gotten one year older."
I don't really care if it's a good thing overall or not. My level of social guilt is exceeding my level of anti-conformity self-loathing, and so I'm seeking to reduce that discomfort.
Well, she does get her holiday cards out every year. And writes a limerick.
That's not a very in-the-season sentiment, Heebie.
I am teasing you! Seriously, though, some recipients will be happy to receive the card.
My level of social guilt is exceeding my level of anti-conformity self-loathing, and so I'm seeking to reduce that discomfort.
I think this could probably move a lot of product were it printed inside a dull brown holiday card fashioned of recycled waste paper.
And yes, I'm Moby's mom could also move a lot of product.
That would maybe, just maybe, have been even a bit funny if I had included the word "sure." Oh well, spilt milk and all that.
Fuck Your Holidays. The Geebies.
That's what I'm talking about. We've forgotten the true spirit of the season. Or the true nature of that spirit. something.
Well, she does get her holiday cards out every year. And writes a limerick.
A friend of mine used to have a limerick as his voice mail greeting. I, and another friend, observed the rule that when we called him, if we had to leave a message, we would do so in limerick form.
38: And then God came and killed all three of you.
But three days later He raised neb from the dead, for reasons that remain obscure.
He resurrected the person he thought was most in need of a lift.
My interpretation is that JP really hates limericks.
How about something like "May the Holy Christian Blood of our Savior bring you good cheer in this holiday season." Makes more sense for Easter but you won't be receiving any more Christmas cards to feel guilty about not answering. If any asks or calls the cops, explain that you were taking a course in early modern Menippean satire.
I really hate voice mail. If I don't answer the phone, send an email like a regular human.
We sometimes talk about sending holiday cards, but I don't feel at all guilty for not doing so. 99% of the cards we get are pictures of people's kids and I figure they get the most out of it by having an excuse to send cute pictures of their kids to people. To be clear, I like seeing the pictures, especially of kids I don't get to see often, but I don't feel the need to reciprocate.
I do harbor some hostility toward people who include a message that is about nothing other than their kids. I'm friends with you, not your offspring. If you feel the need to update me, at least pretend you have a life separate from your children's.
A not so close relative a few years ago sent my family a Christmas update card/letter that took special care to explain that she wouldn't apologize for saying Merry Christmas because this is still America, isn't it?
Now that I've probably insulted half the parents here (I'm sure your cards rock!), I'll quit while I'm ahead and go to bed.
There once was a scholar named Blood,
Who taught in Comp. Lit. and Cult. Stud.,
With such a great name,
When Christmastime came,
His letter was never a dud.
I really hate voice mail. If I don't answer the phone, send an email like a regular human.
Word. Actually I just hate the phone in general. It's one of the many characteristics of introverts, according to some woman who has a book to sell.
(That link is actually very much worth reading, despite the ridiculous format; apparently HuffPo has decided that slideshows are so lucrative that they're going to start using them for text as well as pictures.)
Introverts sure seem to love talking about introversion.
Well, it's not like we have much else to talk about.
Sorry, can't pick up the phone
Leave a limerick when you hear the tone
or something else clever
but just never ever
admit that life's better alone.
(I assume I keep seeing links to stuff about the same book.)
I can honestly say it has never once occurred to me to send out holiday cards.
Caller ID said Nantucket
I swore under my breath, "Fuck it!"
Tore the phone from the wall
Cords, receiver, and all,
And threw the damn thing in a bucket.
The message from Waterloo:
"Limericks end at line two."
The message from Verdun:
I try to do cards for valentines day. Xmas is too crazy, and who doesn't like to get a valentine?
We just got back from the Sufjan Stevens Christmas show. An amazing spectacle.
(I feel like I ought to have some better richer adjectives than that. Sorry.)
Merry Christmas! Now fuck the fuck off
with your family: fuck the fuck off
Excuse this small rant
But the seasonal rant
Drives me crazy. Now fuck the fuck off.
aaargh. "Seasonal rant" s/b "Seasonal cant"
For Nworb:
Send me a Christmas card, will you?
I'd forgotten your family until you
sent your forced Christmas cheer
to your "friends" far and near,
and now I want only to kill you.
We are sending cards this year with e e cummings' Christmas tree poem on them. Are we pretentious twats? I don't care; I love him and that poem is sweet.
We send mostly to friends, and then if there are leftover cards they can go to family.
Also, my sister is getting divorced, and I've been writing the note in our card to her soon-to-be-ex in my head for days. Something gracious and well wishing but that doesn't sound too dramatic and final, even though this might well be our last communication with him ever.
It gets better as you get older. By the time you reach my age, every year a couple or three people-who-you-can't-remember-exactly-who-they-are on your Christmas card list have dropped dead since last time, so the job is quicker and cheaper.
42: I fear I don't understand 39.
A combo of 43 and 45. and just the utter preciousness of it and as always the narcissism of small differences.
There were three friends from the coast
Of their voicemail limericks they'd boast
God was so fucking annoyed
That he cast them into the void
Oh those unfortunate friends from the coast
Does anyone here do a Christmas/New Year's letter that they send out to their friends en masse?
My mom does the Christmas letter and also keeps close track of who sends her Christmas cards every year. If they skip two years in a row, they're off her list. She also sometimes tells me about who's off her list lately.
I'm afraid to start doing cards because I'm more comfortable being the person who never sends cards than with being the person who didn't send you a card this year, and why not? if I don't get around to it every year going forward (which is inevitable).
If someone has sent me a card in past years and I didn't get them a card in past years, they usually stop sending cards to me. That's when I send them one the day after Christmas.
I've kept a detailed list of all people who attempted a holiday tradition with me in the past but gave up, and they're the only ones getting a card, and let's see if they feel bad for giving up on me and resume sending me one next year. And then I'll send them one depending on the output of a random number generator and see if I can predict their habit forming mentality.
Kid D and I are doing some Christmas cards today - last guaranteed posting day to North America today. One of C's cousins' partners works for Apple and they moved out to California this year. Kid D is writing the card - she put in all 6 of them in age order, then wrote a greeting, then said, "Now I will write our names, starting with father. Not the Holy Father."
I don't do a Christmas letter, and I don't do family photos. But I quite like sending my cards - about 40? - and thinking about everyone.
67: I think protocol in these situations is to pretend that this is not the final communication and just treat it like any other card. Bear in mind I have never sent a holiday card to anyone, so this advice should be taken with a grain of salt.
Ah, Sir Kraab, I feel exactly the same way in re: Christmas cards and baby pictures. Each individual card is charming, and each individual baby is, of course, cute, but I'm left feeling that I used to have all these friends whom I actually saw from time to time and now I have only a refrigerator covered with pictures of babies.
I thought Christmas cards were basically dying out. Except for Texans, I don't know anyone my age who sends them, no matter how social conformist/professionally ambitious.
Really? The ones where you upload a photo of your kids being cute and include a generic season's greeting but no content? I get these from my college friends, siblings, friends not originally from Texas, etc. I don't think this is a conservative/liberal thing.
The use of the assimilating prefix "m-" to denote "male version of" is really nauseating. (Not in an oh-no-our-language-is-being-twisted way, just generally.)
I get them basically from anyone that has kids. That seems like the real divide. "Look, they've gotten taller and lumpier."
Nope, just don't get them, even from folks with kids. I can think of one guy in Virginia. Maybe academics still do this for some reason.
I mean, I don't send them out, either. But I get a few from people over 40 or so and that's pretty much it. Definitely not even close to a social norm.
Mostly not academics that I'm getting them from, either. College friends, local friends, extended family.
Mostly people in their 30s. Maybe I'm just universally loved?
81: Ditto "man-" as in "man-bag" for male purse (murse?) and the like. The use of either prefix is a concession that the item in question is inherently unmanly. Time was men proudly carried purses and wore hose (not mantyhose!).
Now don't be hysterical, mladies.
85: We get them from my wife's college friends, not not mine. Maybe it is gendered like that.
It's definitely the wives who are sending them out, so maybe that is in fact the difference.
Are the wives who send you cards sending them to male friends or to couples where they knew the male only?
I can't remember if we get cards from Jammies' female friends from college. Of his post-college friends, most of them partnered up after Jammies and me, and so the wives know me as well as they know Jammies and we get cards once they have kids.
Maybe my college friends are really lazy.
69: If you're going to wear pants made out of little tiny patent-leather tiles, they might as well be leggings.
Except for Texans, I don't know anyone my age who sends them
Maybe academics still do this for some reason.
So because your particular circle doesn't do it, it's obviously confined to a few narrow demographics. Logic fail, my friend.
I/we get 12-15 cards a year; none from academics, a few from Texans, and the rest from elsewhere.
And then there are always a couple annoying ones from cow-orkers who send a completely generic pre-printed card with a signature and no pictures or anything else. Just say "Merry Christmas"* at the office and save yourself the stamp, yo.
*The people I encounter don't have a chip on their shoulder about Christmas; it just never occurs to them anyone doesn't celebrate it.
My wife is the driving force behind our holiday card emissions, but I kind of enjoy sending/receiving them. (See above, re: bad Jew.) She also writes a pretty decent holiday letter.
Anyone want one? I think we ordered too many cards this year. (You know you do, Heebie.)
I never send out cards, and mostly wish people didn't send them to me because they make me feel guilty. Decent, well mannered, well organized people (brought up in a Christmas celebrating tradition) send out cards, but I'm not one of them.
The only cards I don't hate receiving are those from arty friends who make their own. Those are a pleasure. But a bought card or family pictures just make me feel like a non-functional person.
Huh. Arty cards from friends who make their own make me feel like a non-functional person. Who has the energy?
I'm afraid to start doing cards because I'm more comfortable being the person who never sends cards than with being the person who didn't send you a card this year, and why not? if I don't get around to it every year going forward (which is inevitable).
Oh, yes, this. I mean, really, I don't do it because I'm lazy and selfish, but when I want to rationalize it, Sheila's argument is what I reach for.
Oh, that's a sphere I don't compete in. Someone does a visual-art sort of thing for me, I admire but don't feel bad about leaving unmatched. Addressing fifty envelopes, on the other hand, is something that anyone should be able to do so I'm a worthless slug for not doing it.
It's definitely the wives who are sending them out, so maybe that is in fact the difference.
How many folks receive cards from single male friends? (Not trying to be provocative, genuinely curious.)
I'm thinking of sending out some cards--two years ago, I picked up a bunch of nice postcards from Iceland's photography museum, and I've collected a few other nice cards since then, but as you can see, past intentions to use these lovely bits of stationary have not exactly come to fruition.
From single men, only ever if they're arty types.
As a man who carries a purse, I heartily endorse 81.
Decent, well mannered, well organized people (brought up in a Christmas celebrating tradition) send out cards.
Their villainy knows no bounds. Through a strict regimen of only sending holiday cards with substantive personal messages, I've managed to send not a one in over twenty years.
Addressing fifty envelopes, on the other hand, is something that anyone should be able to do
Because friends who live far away and move always immediately send their latest valid address.
||
No more efficient but unusual masturbating to Alex Moulton.
|>
How many folks receive cards from single male friends?
I definitely had one male friend who sent them when he was single. I strongly suspect he's still the driving force now that he's married. He comes from a family of extremely nice Midwestern Lutherans, so most people's MMV.
I know there have been a few others over the years, though I'm not remembering who at the moment.
Addressing fifty envelopes, and tracking down current addresses by hook or by crook, on the other hand, is something that anyone should be able to do.
and tracking down current addresses by hook or by crook dashing off a quick Facebook message
Crap. Okay, that's it, no cards for anyone.
Your delicate condition is obviously making you hysterical.
The bigger the belly, the smaller the brain!
-- Heebie's colleague
The smaller the belly, the smaller the grain.
What's that you say, Halford, paleo diets lead to low birth weight?!?
Is Mario really more masculine than Wario?
The Grand Tetons and the Gros Ventres almost, but not quite, work together very well.
Is m-fun now out?
No, as long as you don't call it "mun".
Every year, I feel deep shame about not sending out a Christmas/New Year's card. All of my extended family sends out cards (that's a lot of cards), and I think they excuse me for not doing so because obviouslythe single people are feckless and impermanent that way--which I kinda am, but makes me want to send out cards to prove them wrong. However, sending out cards is a pain in the ass, sets a bad precedent, and requires money.
Living the stereotype.
123: That's my new law firm's name