A Lighter View
To card or not to card?
By K.E.H. Stagg

Dec. 10, 2009

Every year around this time, I ask myself the same question: do I really want to send Christmas cards? The honest response is, “Of course. No!” I don’t want to address a bazillion envelopes, spend a fortune in stamps and then rack my brains to think of an interesting, un-cutesy, non-bragging letter on the subject “what I did this past year.”

I initially limited myself to immediate family and co-workers in my proximity. Then I second-guessed myself and asked stupid questions like, “Do my boss’s direct reports qualify as co-workers in my proximity, even though they’re on different floors? And what about their direct reports?” Or I worried that the great-aunt’s stepchildren would find out they’d been omitted and be offended. Even if they don’t send me a card, does etiquette demand that I send one to them because I sent one to their mother?

By the time it was all over, I’d bought enough cards to deforest an entire continent, and was still slapping stamps on my foil-lined envelopes when Memorial Day rolled around. The rotten part about it is that postage always goes up between when I start The Great Card Dilemma and when I finish, so I had to get funky stamps that announced to the entire world, “I’m late with my cards!” as if the Christmas stamps alone weren’t enough.

Part of my agony also stemmed from boring myself; I hate writing the same thing over and over and over. I also worried about boring the recipients, although why should friends far-flung as Florida and Washington get together to compare my scribblings? It’s not as if they know each other, although they both know me. But even if they did, what does it matter if they learn I’ve told them exactly the same thing? Well, maybe just one or two...