Christmas Cards – Hmmmmm.

To send Christmas cards or not to send Christmas cards, that is the question…

I don’t like sending Christmas cards. Oh, it’s not really that I don’t like to…more like it is stressful for me. I’m probably the only person on the planet that can turn sending Christmas cards into a traumatic event!

I always feel like I should make them, instead of buying them. I did it one year, about 6-7 years ago, I guess. Ever since then I feel awful buying them. But making them never seems to get to the top of the list – an easy thing to ditch when it looks like I’m not going to get everything done and I have to start crossing things off the list without doing them.

Then I obsess over whether to send religious ones or secular ones. I feel bad sending religious ones to people who are not believers, and I feel bad sending secular ones to religious people. That seems easy enough – send 2 different kinds. But that feels fake. More trauma.

Then there’s the family newsletter. Ha!  Story time! Way back when the kids were little (8 and 9) we went to Washington D.C. on vacation and met a family we really liked in line at the Washington Monument. Their kids were the same age as ours, and we really hit it off. Somehow we ended up exchanging addresses, and began sending Christmas cards every year.

Over the years, their kids really excelled in school, and ours were just pretty normal kids. By the time they were in college it got to be a yearly joke about their kids and their double majors, one in Micro-biology and Nuclear Physics and the other in both law school and medical school (okay so I’m exaggerating, but not by much!) and ours, one in prison for drug trafficking, and the other a drug addicted prostitute. It was almost enough to make me stop doing newsletters! Heeheehee!

ANYWAY, I always feel like I’m walking a fine line between stating the facts and bragging. And then I have to make sure I’m not telling too much of the grown kid’s business while not making it sound like we don’t know what they’re up to. And being afraid I’ll forget something important, or mention one person’s visit and forget another’s.

And then there’s the send a photo, don’t send a photo… I always worry that by sending a picture I’m sending something they don’t need, and don’t want and might feel bad about throwing away, but don’t want to keep it (although I NEVER feel that way about the ones I get, so I don’t know why I would think they would feel that way!)

That’s not even taking into consideration that sending Christmas cards could be considered a waste of both resources (trees) and money. They just get tossed in the trash. And really, everyone we send cards to already know what we’re up to. Lord have mercy. But I DO like getting cards, and if you don’t send them, you don’t get them.

As you can see, I make myself just a little crazy over it. So, I do what I always do. I procrastinate. As long as possible without doing it so late that they won’t arrive by Christmas.

This morning Mr. Tattered asked what my plans were for Christmas cards. I said, “put it off as long as possible.” To which he replied, “well, then would you get them out for me?” And I said, “sure.” And then scurried out to the store to buy them. Heeheehee!

Yeah, well…store bought.

So, now we at least know that cards will be going out. Until an hour ago, the newsletter was in question. Now it is written (although we’re going to think on it overnight to make sure it says what we want to say) and will only take a short time to run them through the printer. It’s possible they’ll be in the mail by Tuesday.

Whew! Maybe next year I’ll just do it earlier and spare myself the trauma. “Cuz by then I’m going to be REALLY organized, right?!

Good grief. It’s not like we send out a gazillion cards. This shouldn’t be this hard. Life is too short to make such small things into such a big deal. So, I’m going to try really hard (no promises here!) to make cards next year. It would certainly be a way to express my creativity without having to resort to painting canvases that I have nothing to do with…