Hives from Holiday Cards

It’s that exciting time of year when mailboxes start overflowing with traditional holiday greetings!

Whether it’s a simple postcard design with a picture on the front, an actual card with a peaceful winter scene, or, my personal favorite, a family newsletter with a small note jotted at the bottom, I open each one and look them over with my kids. I tell stories about the people who have graced my life, usually before they were born, and let them point out the friends they know well.

I remember watching my mom and dad work on their Christmas cards every year, usually taking just a night or two to get done after dinner was cleaned up, having a snack as they watched a movie and worked together. It was something I knew I wanted to do as well when I started my own family. As we move away from print and into digital communication in just about every way possible, the traditional holiday card is something I truly enjoy. For the most part, anyway.

The thing is, as much as I love receiving them, sending them myself sends me into a full-blown guilt-ridden meltdown every year, without fail.

Whether I design them myself or use a regular card with a photo tucked inside, they always trip me up. One year, I ordered a whole stack that sat in my cabinet and never got mailed. Last year, I scrapped the Christmas card altogether and did a Valentine, which was fun, but not the same. Every year, I start with good intentions; a family Christmas photo is usually done in early November, and my photographer is quick with the turn around so I can get them printed. But each year, I open up one of the many online card sites available and…I…freeze. Everything about it is overwhelming, and I can’t focus.

I can’t choose a design, and when I do choose, I can’t decide how many to order. In fact, at this minute, our card design has been sitting in an open browser tab for 10 days. I’ve put it on my calendar “Order Cards!” so that I can take advantage of a coupon. I’ve solicited advice from the husband about which design he likes best (for the record, it’s somewhere between “They all look good, just pick one,” and “Why are we even doing this?”). And somehow, I still haven’t quite been able to click purchase.

I will finally buy them, sometime around the beginning of December, and they will arrive when things begin to get so crazy busy that I can’t possibly spare a couple of hours to sit and write personalized notes plus address the envelopes. Then they will sit untouched on my desk, and with each beautiful card I receive in the mail, the guilt I feel over not getting our own Christmas cards to the mailbox will gnaw at me.

It’s hard to explain why this one simple thing is such a stumbling block for me. There’s certainly no competition over who has the best card, or how early they get it out. As a card receiver, I know I don’t take note of those things. Rationally, I know that everyone I’m sending the cards to 1) are people who care for me and wouldn’t want me to stress about this and 2) just appreciate getting holiday cheer like I do.  But this isn’t a matter of being rational, is it?

No, in my mind, the cards become a symbol of my failures in day to day life. Failure to be tech savvy enough to create printable address labels, failure to execute that “holiday-perfect look” in pictures that other seem to curate so easily, failure to keep an updated enough address book so that nobody is overlooked or -maybe worse- receives a card and thinks who is this family, and failure to overcome my natural tendency to procrastinate. The easy solution would be to just not do cards, but I don’t want to do that.

It’s a way to loop back in with people I’ve moved away from and not had time to keep up with. There’s always social media, but a lot of my extended family doesn’t use that, and I’ve found that the information people share in a holiday card is usually more authentic than the day to day post on Facebook.

So, I’ll try yet again this year. I know I’ll fail, look for a card from me probably around January 6? But maybe, by the time my own kids are old enough to have a real memory of me working on Christmas cards, I will have it down, and they can remember me sitting and happily working on cards as I munch on spicy Chex mix and watch a favorite movie.