Fed-Up Friday: Enough With the Holiday Card Mania!

It’s a flipping hassle any way you look at it. I love almost everything about Christmas. (And sorry if that’s not your holiday, but it’s mine and that’s what I’m ranting about here.) I love the music and the decorations and the smell of fresh pine in my house. In a sick way I actually enjoy shopping, schlepping and shipping of hundreds of tokens of my affection to the farthest corners of the country. I don’t even mind the bell-ringing Salvation Army soldiers stationed on every corner, as I find their presence a timely reminder of just how fortunate I am. My singular yuletide grievance is the godforsaken holiday card.

Beyond the practical concerns (namely, the cost), it’s a flipping hassle any way you look at it. First of all, you really only have two choices: A boring, store-bought card that you then must personalize two hundred or so times, or a photo card. While the repeated personalization might seem the more daunting choice, if you have children you know that getting a decent family photo could take several months years. But let’s assume you have a halfway decent shot where only one kid is making his crazy monster face and you were able to blur out the majority of your wrinkles with that handy Picasa “glow” tool. You still have to create the card, which includes coming up with a sincere, meaningful, not-generic and yet offensive-to-no-religion caption for your photo. After a week of hair-pulling you’ll resort to “Happy holidays from the Smith family!” But at least that’s done.

Once your stack arrives, you get to address them all. Of course if you’re clever and forward-thinking, you created a handy list in some program from which you can print mailing labels directly (yeah, I never got around to that either). Don’t forget to double-check last year’s list of cards you received, to make sure you’re not forgetting anybody. (What? You didn’t make a list? Bummer.) You wisely bought self-adhesive stamps—remember the paste-y, paper-cut tongues of years past?—and you pay your youngest a dollar to lick the envelopes, so it only takes you four hours to get them all stuffed and prepped.

You sigh in relief. Five minutes later, panic sets in: Should you have included a holiday letter? You know, that clever little year-in-review memo that lets your friends know that somehow you could afford to go to Cabo, Rome and Aspen in the same year, and that your violin-playing, straight A-getting, soccer championship-winning spawn just started their own nonprofit to benefit Haiti? Oh wait, the farthest you went this year was to the Ikea two towns over, and you’d rather your nearest and dearest not know about that little school expulsion thing anyway. You congratulate yourself for not including a letter.

The cards start pouring in. You give each a respectful glance before tossing it into a pile, which you will reverently dump into the recycle bin on December 26. (Okay if you’re my sister, you will trim each one carefully and slip it into your photo album, but come on.) You spend the next month trying not to picture your own two-dozen lovingly crafted cards decaying down there in the landfill with them.

Happy holidays! 

Has anybody else had enough of the holiday card hoo-ha?