holiday greetings

It has been quite a festive holiday preparation weekend chez Jette and Beau. I assembled and decorated the pink and sparkly Barbie tree, which is topped this year by a finger puppet of the Abominable Snowman that my sister gave me last Christmas. I also kept Drinky Snowman and put SpongeBob next to a curvaceous bikini-clad woman. At the foot of the tree, Eloise’s pet turtle Skipperdee rests atop a hot-pink-and-silver tree skirt. Keep it fun, that’s my motto. My boyfriend looked on in amusement during breaks from coding Holidailies, which is his idea of festive holiday preparation.
I put on appropriate tree-trimming music, too. My boyfriend requested that I skip the Muppet music. I have some Christmas CDs that aren’t Muppet-y, but they weren’t quite what I wanted. I finally put the following four CDs on random in the CD player, where they provided excellent background music for the evening:

• Lyle Lovett, I Love Everybody
• Professor Longhair, Mardi Gras in Baton Rouge
• Marcia Ball/Irma Thomas/Tracy Nelson, Sing It!
• The soundtrack to A Dirty Shame

I also started working on the Christmas cards this weekend. I would call them holiday cards, but that implies that December is the only time during which one might send holiday cards. And if you think that, you haven’t met my relatives.
Personally, I am not a big greeting-card sender. I mail a batch of a dozen or so Christmas cards in early December, mostly to relatives who would be mortally offended if I neglected them. I keep a list of who gets which type of card so I don’t send the same card two years in a row. (I am still getting rid of Pooh and Gorey cards from 2001. Um, those are two separate types of cards—the idea of Edward Gorey having illustrated Pooh is fascinating, though, isn’t it?)
I usually buy cards with my mom on the day after Christmas, which is a small family tradition. We are picky in different ways. My mom is always torn because she would love to buy merry, cutesy cards but my dad gets grouchy if the cards don’t have a religious theme. (Did I mention they have a “Keep Christ in Christmas” bumper sticker on the SUV?) I usually buy cards with illustrations from the better children’s books because that is about all the cuteness I can tolerate. I saw some cards this year with a little dog lifting his leg over something Christmas-y (a stocking, a candy cane, I can’t remember) but the problem is that the cards have to be acceptable to send to the older family members. They freaked out the year I sent cards with a ferret in a Santa hat on the front.
Saturday night, I went through the cards from previous years and realized I hadn’t bought any with my mom last year. I don’t remember why. I did have some photo-frame cards, which I think I meant to give my sister to use, but which are really only suitable if you can put a photo of an adorable child or pet in them. We made an emergecy run to the bookstore and I bought some cards with Olivia (the adorable pig from the children’s books) on the front.
I do send the occasional birthday cards and thank-you notes, but I don’t like buying birthday-themed cards or other special-occasion cards. Most of them are lame at best and the prices are ridiculous. I mean, $3 for something that’s going to get glanced at and tossed in the trash? Forget it. I would make my own, but I don’t have time to create results I find acceptable. I like to buy blank cards with Texas wildflowers on the front, which don’t feature Hallmark’s idea of clever writing, which are relatively inexpensive, and which serve for just about any occasion. Everyone seems happy with this arrangement.
Now I confess I love stationery and good writing paper. I recently bought some correspondence cards with New Orleans streetcars on them that look really smashing. I have been toying with buying the Crane’s notecards with a single lavender bloom engraved on them, which looks a bit like a bluebonnet, but I have managed to resist temptation so far. I hardly use the stationery I already have.
However, when I talk about my relatives and their card mania, I am not talking about personal stationery. I am talking about greeting cards geared towards specific occasions, the types of cards that my relatives simply adore.
My boyfriend walked into the house from work a couple of weeks ago and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw something new and odd on the counter.
“Is that … a Thanksgiving card?” he asked, looking puzzled. “I didn’t know they made Thanksgiving cards.”
Oh, honey. Not only do they make Thanksgiving cards, but my mom sends them to a wide circle of relatives every year. I still remember the year she called me up all stressed out because she’d forgotten to send my grandparents their Thanksgiving card, and it was the day before Thanksgiving and they would be so hurt and offended if they didn’t get one, and what if they found out my mom had sent my grandmother’s sister a card but they didn’t get one? My mom had to drive across town, at a time when she was trying to plan a big holiday dinner, to sneakily slip the card in my grandparents’ mailbox so they wouldn’t feel left out.
“Why don’t you just give it to them on Thanksgiving day?” I asked.
“Oh, then they’ll think I forgot about them and it was an afterthought.”
“We are talking about Thanksgiving cards, Mom. I don’t think anyone else I know sends Thanksgiving cards.”
My sister and I discussed this, at which point I found out that my sister has also been known to send Thanksgiving cards. I have asked to be excluded from the insanity, but my mom sent my boyfriend and me a Thanksgiving card this year anyway. It had a big happy turkey on the front.
The family also sends Easter cards, Halloween cards, Valentine’s cards (actual greeting cards, although they will tuck some little-kid valentines in there too), and probably Fourth of July cards, although I might be imagining that one. It’s a given that they send Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards, of course, plus birthday and anniversary and special-occasion cards like mad.
And these are not cheap cards, mind you, they are usually cards bought individually, which is pricey even at the grocery store. This is why the greeting-card companies manage to stay in business … because for every holiday they invent, my family rushes out to buy special cards for it.
I can count on one hand the number of letters I receive every year, most of which are in fact tucked into greeting cards. In fact, I think my grandmother and great-aunt are the only ones left who write little notes in their greeting cards. Everyone else just signs and sends. Like most people, my family uses email and long-distance calls in place of letters.
Email has not decreased the number of greeting cards, though, impersonal and Hallmark-y, marking every upbeat holiday. What does this say? “I’m thinking of you, even though I don’t have time to talk or write”? “I think someone else’s writing is more expressive of this holiday season than mine”? That would only work for me if cards were written by the Algonquin Round Table.
Even e-cards (which I also dislike, because they make noise and require plug-ins) haven’t appealed to the relatives. I’m the family renegade … because I don’t send holiday cards except in December. What a black sheep I am. Baaaa. Put on some Professor Longhair, and pass me that tiny ornament shaped like a margarita. A festive holiday margarita would be just the thing right now, wouldn’t it?