December 18, 2007
Tuesday

I made my first foray into the world of the commercial Christmas yesterday. On the Thousand Acres above Sheridan, Wyoming there was no Christmas at all, and there didn’t need to be. There were decorations in some of the places I visited in the towns, including a forlorn-looking flocked ribbon wrap around the columns in the waiting area of the Sheridan airport. At home I’ve been handling Christmas items and putting up decorations that give me pleasure.

Yesterday, not long after I learned of my former colleague’s death, I set out to do some errands. Ron asked me to get four Christmas cards he could use to send the gift checks to his older daughters, his son, and his oldest grandchild, now fifteen and getting a separate contribution toward the laptop computer she wants. In the past he’d made cards on his computer, but I think that software is obsolete and anyway, he’d sent the same one twice and he was now out of new designs and fresh ideas.

Thus I found myself in a Hallmark store, clutching a bag of potpourri and two Lenox ornaments on sale (one of them perfect for Lynn), and standing in front of the racks of individual Christmas cards.

It’s been a long time since I bought commercial Christmas cards, boxed or individual. I’ve sent my party invitation on decorated sheets and, after Christmas, my Dreaded Annual Holiday Letter, also on decorated sheets, with an added thank-you note to those who brought something to the party.

The racks and shelves were full of cards suitable for any relationship you can think of: family, close friends, not-so-close friends, business acquaintances, people you’re sending a card to only because they sent you one. Helpful labels directed you to situation-specific cards: suitable for bereaved person, person in recovery (from an addiction, not an illness), across the miles, to a group, from a group. And there was an extensive array of person-specific cards: for a fine veterinarian, newspaper carrier, oncology nurse, pool service worker, dry cleaner (I am not making this up!). Does anyone really buy all these individually-targeted cards (at a cost of at least $2.00 each)? There must be a market for them, or they wouldn’t be on the racks.

I did spend a lot of time actually reading the “to my daughter” cards and getting all blubbery. I was looking at one when I got a text message from Lynn saying she’d arrived at her college town apartment safely (I’m not calling it “home” yet) and thanking me for changing her meal plan for next semester (her last). Suddenly a great wave of sentimental melancholy washed over me, a feeling of sadness because although I appreciate my newspaper carrier and my hairdresser and my lawn service crew and my dry cleaner (who keeps my killer turquoise silk turtleneck looking perfect), I am not going to send them a Christmas card. I’m also not going to send them a copy of the Dreaded Annual Holiday Letter, a circumstance which might actually please them if they knew.

I took the Lenox ornaments, the potpourri, the “to my daughter” card I was holding (it has an angel on it and says how much I miss the baby she was while at the same time loving and cherishing the young woman she has become) up to the counter, grabbing along the way a box of only ten cards with a picture of a church and a wish for a holy peaceful season for Ron to send.

And I got out of there, back to my house where there is one nicely-decorated tree, the detritus of stuff I was too busy and distracted to put away before I left more than month ago, five UPS boxes of stuff I shipped back from Wyoming that has to be sorted and stored, and one name to delete from my Dreaded Annual Holiday Letter database.

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