Christmas Cards

Holiday season is coming. One thing I like about late December / early January is by that time our family accumulated a giant pile of Christmas cards, most of which I haven’t seen because my wife gets the mail in our house. So each year I settle in and go through them before they get thrown out.

Christmas cards are one aspect of life that is totally obscured from the view of single bachelor men. Single men don’t buy Christmas Cards. Single men don’t normally receive more than three or four Christmas Cards, maybe from their sisters and mothers. They really have no idea that after being married five years, they’ll have 75 Christmas cards flowing into their mailbox during the month of Christmas. A cultural surprise it is.

And Christmas Cards are a very good thing. Once you have kids, you have no choice. You gotta do your part and contribute. And the primary reason that you have to contribute is because your Christmas Card is your message to the world about Who You Are. A Christmas Card is to a married couple with kids is what a Halloween costume is to a 22-year old. It is a public form of quasi-art that you know people will see. It is planned and considered in advance. The idea is yours and expresses what you think is funny or interesting, but it’s not just mental; your physical pluses and minuses are part of the package. And your choice will convey a message, whether that message is “I don’t care,” or “We are straight-laced” or whatever. You have an opportunity each year to do the equivalent of blast faxing your friends with something you’ve created (or paid to have someone create). You gotta do it right. [ed note: of course, the primary reason that I now believe in the fundamental importance of Christmas cards is because my wife put together a smashingly funny one last year; two years ago I thought they were crap and a waste of money, but lets just ignore that for now]

The father’s primary purpose, as in countless other aspects of family life, is simply to keep your wife from going horribly wrong. In the picture (and if you have kids and you’re sending a Christmas Card without a picture, you may be beyond help), your pet can be an accessory but can’t be given equal billing with the kids. Matching outfits are only permissible if both adults wear the outfit as well, making it plainly over the top. Boys’ hair must have been cut at least four days prior to the picture and should not be glued to their heads. Parents must be in the pictures at least every 3-4 years so your out of town friends aren’t horribly shocked at how friggin’ old and fat you look after not having seen you for ten years (or to prep them for the plastic surgery and/or Hair Club surprises).

In addition to the Christmas Card being a form of semi-art you circulate around, the other key purpose Christmas Cards serve is to allow those friends that don’t see you very often to see if your kids are uglier or better looking than you. Sometimes you see a Christmas Card with two attractive parents, and you look at the kid and you know with certainty that the parents are thinking to themselves “what the fuck happened here?” as they’ve done the genetic equivalent of mixing Dr. Pepper and Vanilla Almond Special K, managing to create a gross and disgusting thing out of two great ones. Other times the kid is so cute it makes you wonder…

One old tradition that I’m sad that apparently has died is the Christmas letter. The Christmas letter was roundly mocked and derided as shameless self-promotion and prattling on about things that aren’t interesting [ed note: like a blog? Dddyfsto: Shut up]. As a result, at least for my generation and social circuit, the Christmas letter is now extinct (my parents’ friends still occasionally send them, but baby boomers have never been shy when it comes to shameless self-promotion). This is an awful shame. These things were great. At the absolute worst, you got to mock and deride the letter and, at best, they were actually kinda funny and informative. I mean, if your friends are going off the deep end and getting all weird on you, don’t you want to know that before you travel and visit them and find their house postered wall-to-wall with I Can Has Cheezburger kitties? Wouldn’t it have been nice to know that they were going down that path before you agreed to spend the weekend? You can see, we need the Christmas letter!

And who are the people that are complaining? These are people that think Christmas letters are boring, but when they get yours, instead of just not reading it, they read it anyway so they can complain about how boring it is. I can respect people that like X-mas letters; I can respect people that don’t like them and don’t read them. But people who enter into an unpleasant experience so they can mock it later. Who needs those people as friends?

So c’mon, join with me. Let’s bring back the Christmas letter! Who is with me here? [as this is a blog, I am supposed to say something like “let’s see a show of hands in the comments section”]. Time is short, but how long does it really take to write a page of your family’s accomplishments and to figure out a way to portray them in a reasonable/interesting/or funny way?

C'mon people. I’m expecting some letters this year. Let's do it!