You may remember (I do) when postage was cheap and everyone sent Christmas cards which were then strung on ribbons or taped along doorframes or displayed en masse on the mantle. They were intended to add to the holiday decorations as well as demonstrate how many friends one had. When you opened the cards, you’d often find—evidence of the sender’s social significance—a printed signature: “The Henry Smiths.” Many times nothing handwritten at all. These cards were like calling cards of the last century. Not that they weren’t well-meaning. But they were a form, a ritual.
What century do I live in? There must be a smidgen of my grandmother lurking in my cells. But in the twenty-first century, do I want to keep doing this card thing? Shall we include a Christmas letter? If we really cared, wouldn’t we call or write personally to connect directly? Are we still trying to demonstrate that we have (1) leisure to prepare such cards; (2) enough friends to make this an efficient way to maintain connection; (3) enough money for all those nice cards and stamps?
Example of a resume. Put a holly leaf in the corner and could it be a Christmas letter? :)
In a way, isn’t the writing of the Christmas letter basically a year-end faculty assessment, resume and all? What have been our highs and lows? But aside from that, it feels as if there’s also a genuine wish to keep old friends, those who live far away, in our minds. Not letting go entirely of our past. Especially if you’ve made several radical life changes, as I have, there’s a comfort in yearly touching the earth we came from, so to speak. “I am not that person anymore, but I was that person. I acknowledge that person.” I also acknowledge, when I hear from them, that others are changing also.
Okay, probably sending these cards/letters is mostly for my own benefit. But then I think about the new poems I’ve lodged in my computer during this last year. I write these Why? Only because I am doing the activity called Me. As I work, I am thinking a bit of a reader, but only peripherally. Yet when they’re finally in journals and books, they’re the connection I wish to make with the world, with the reader.
The Death of Chatterton, painting by Henry Wallis. Just another poet in his garrett.
I freely acknowledge, I often keep the world at the remove of the letter-writer. I cannot do the work of writing and simultaneously be much of a social being. Maybe the Christmas card/letter is my way of saying, “I do think of you, from my cave.”
I am totally ambivalent. I do trust ritual to bring a heightened awareness. Ritual says: “This is now, this moment, not some other. This is Christmas, or your birthday, or Yom Kippur, not some other time. This day, not some other day. Here is my Christmas card that demonstrates I am aware of you on this one holiday.”
Have you given up cards, or never sent them in the first place? How have you worked this out in your own mind?