September 11, 2008
We have not seen the Harvest Moon yet, greeted trick or treaters, or tasted the turkey. Yet, a Christmas card arrived in our snail mail this week, and it is only mid-September.
I am perplexed. I love it and hate it all at the same time.
The good news in my confusion is that I am glad to have time to read the card and attached letter now rather than during the frenzy of the season. The bad is that the early card conjured a host of emotions, mostly guilt, sending me to the basement in search of my own unsent cards from last year.
I am in deep trouble with my mother over that, too, or I would be if she knew. She is battling Alzheimer's so perhaps my onetime mistake of not sending cards will slip by her.
Is it necessary to send Christmas cards at all, I ponder?
Mom will never know that I did not send cards, and besides does it really matter.
I understand that it is liberating to not send Christmas cards thus providing one with more time to enjoy the holiday or merely survive it. I understand that anti-Christmas card believers have a point. Christmas letters can be boring, cards are expensive and so is postage. No one really wants to hear "my son the doctor" braggadocio or a litany of your latest illnesses and surgeries.
I get it.
But, here is the rub; my mother does not get it. No matter how hard I try to ignore it, her voice is still in my head telling me to get those cards mailed the week after Thanksgiving.
"Friends and family will want to hear from you," she would say, "And you will want to hear from them."
Once, my husband offered to help me, and he was summarily and permanently banished from the placing of stamps on envelopes. He slapped them on any which way in a hurry to get the task done. That would not do for my mother or me.
I can hear my mother now explaining how important it is for the stamp to be straight. The handwritten address must be written clearly and evenly, too.
"Christmas cards are too important not to be done right," my mother used to say.
Hubby lost his stamp-placing job leading me to ponder this question.
If we send cards out of a sense of obligation, then granted there is no joy in the practice. However, if we send cards out of a sincere wish to communicate and to reach out and touch the lives of others, Christmas cards are priceless, welcome and enduring.
My mother forgets many things these days, but each Christmas she miraculously remembers how important sending Christmas cards are to her.
She asks, "Kay Jean, have we sent my cards yet? Have you sent yours? Better get that done, and don't forget to be neat about it."
The stamps will be straight and the cards neatly addressed, I promise.
I do not ever want to lose that job.
