Christmas cards

Sir Henry Cole is said to have sent the first card in 1843, and we've been sending and receiving them ever since. We can not only judge a sender's personality by the cards he sends, but we can also sense the changing moods of society itself by the differences, from decade to decade, in the style, subject matter, and art work of the Christmas cards it creates.

We creep closer to the month of December.  And as we creep, we consider once more the vexing problem of Christmas cards.  Do we send them, or do we not? '

I'm not certain why discussing this issue has become an annual tradition here in the Northwest Corner blog.  It first arose in 2008, the second year that I cheerfully published what had begun as a humorous, passing stab at imitating the obsession of what I then considered a much younger generation. 

Blogging.

I presented a brief history of the custom (see my quote above), and then began questioning my own sanity in continuing the tradition while stranded in the midst of a society that seemed to despise tradition.  But I quickly brushed my qualms aside, as well as my progressive reputation.  Like a cigar-smoking Tory, I boldly declaimed:

Let's face it. Maybe in 2008, with email and Facebook so readily available, no one really does care if I send them a card or not. But I send them for myself, at least in part. Christmas just doesn't feel like Christmas until I carry my stack of envelopes down to the corner and drop them in the mailbox.

And send them I did.

The issue fell dormant for the next eight years.  But in 2016, the issue raised its ugly, if holly-wreathed, head again.  I not only questioned the sending of Christmas cards, but professed myself shocked at the vulgarity of whatever cards actually were available for sending.  What's wrong with society today, I cried, in tones redolent of the Republican National Committee?  Have we lost all appreciation not only for the sanctity of Christmas, but for the simple, all-American values represented by public portrayals of happy families about the tree, and rosy-cheeked kids on sleds, and snow storms, and deer gamboling through the forest?

Maybe -- except in the bosom of our nuclear families -- we should all just sit around a plain pole and exchange ironic witticisms.  Or did Seinfeld beat me to it?   Happy Festivus?

And with that, the floodgates of blogdom were flung open.

I offered my yawning readers similar themes in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022.  How original!  How predictable!  No wonder my readership figures began spirally downward!

And yet, through all these many pages of self-questioning angst and lamentations, one fact stood out:  I continued to send Christmas cards, year after year.

Which brings us to 2023.  Let me be brief.  And unapologetic.  I've ordered Christmas cards.  They arrived today.  I will bend over my desk, appending personal greetings to each.  Yes.

Yes.  While the rest of you gather around the Festivus Pole, worshipping the gods of modern, sarcastic, ironic, post-traditional America -- I proudly admit --

In 2023, I once more shall mail Christmas cards! 

Merry Christmas.