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American Life: A lot like Christmas

Posted December 17, 2007

"People who you see everyday do not send you Christmas letters.  Largely because such missives are a tissue of half-truths, wild embellishments, outright lies, falsehood and fabrications. (A bit like the story of Christmas, now that I think about it.)" — Christopher Corbett

by Christopher Corbett

Baltimore — (TFN): The old song says “it’s beginning to look at lot like Christmas”. But in the country I live in it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas back around Labor Day. So by the time the bleak mid-winter rolls around I have had just about all of the tidings of comfort and joy that I can stand. Part of the complications during the season to be jolly is that the season results in so little jollity. The pop psychology holds that Christmas is a “stressful” time.

That’s true from what I can see.

But I have begun to reduce that sort of stress in my life. I did this without consciously realizing that I was probably part of some sort of trend. We simply stopped sending Christmas cards. It was not a conscious decision. We more or less realized at some point that we had reached the stage of sending Christmas cards on a triage basis. IF someone sent us a Christmas card we would send one back. Somewhere along the line we started keeping the Christmas cards from the previous season, the better to assess this card sending business. No question about it, we were getting fewer Christmas cards. And we were sending fewer cards, too. I suppose this is self-fulfilling, eh?

Plus, Christmas cards and postage were getting to be very expensive. As I write this with more than a week to go before the yuletide gay the only Christmas cards I have in hand are formal – form letters, really - from stock brokers, lawyers (just had the will updated), and insurance agents (lots of life insurance), the people who speak to the real meaning of Christmas, the meaning of Christmas so well understood by Jacob Marley and Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ classic tale, “A Christmas Carol.”

Money. (Lawyers, stockbrokers and insurance agents NEVER use the word Christmas on any correspondence. Seasons Greetings! Happy Holidays!)

Other than that, the receipt of Christmas cards is down to a trickle in my world. I suppose that old people still send cards because the sending of Christmas cards was an old custom. Now everyone is in a hurry. And there is always e-mail although I can’t say that I have had a lot of those e-mail cards. They are sometimes hard to open.

Actual Christmas cards seem rarer and rarer. If my personal research means anything with more than a week to go before the birthday of the Nazarene, the bins of Christmas cards at the discount drug stores have been further discounted. Everything must go, as they say in retail. The sending of Christmas cards was an old custom that belonged to a slower time. And belonged, too, to the age of manners, a more formal and probably more gracious time. It was a time when people wrote thank you notes, acknowledged invitations, sent letters of condolence on the death of loved ones.

Remember manners?

We live in a coarse and meaner world, I think. The Internet has only accelerated free-fall. But we still get the unctuous Christmas letter because that is something that will survive the demise of the Christmas card. That’s simply because the Christmas letter is not about Christmas but about the sender of said letter. People who you see everyday do not send you Christmas letters.

Largely because such missives are a tissue of half-truths, wild embellishments, outright lies, falsehood and fabrications. (A bit like the story of Christmas, now that I think about it.) Although I have not studied this matter . . . I have anecdotal evidence that doctors – or more precisely the wives of doctors – spin the biggest whoppers when the season to be jolly rolls around.

These letters are written to be read by the families of other doctors. Guys that hubby went to medical school with. They are designed to shock and awe. Look what we’ve got!!! We’re rich. Rich, I say. Rich beyond your wildest dreams. And all the children are geniuses and the wives look like runway models. And hubby has a brand new Lamborghini or something or other. Big beach house!!! Trips to Gstaad!!! Wow! They are vulgar testament to the true meaning of Christmas and the truer meaning of American medicine — but let’s leave that for another time, shall we?

My thinking about the decline of the Christmas card peaked last week with the news that hundreds of thousands of holiday cards and letters thanking wounded American troops for their sacrifice and wishing them well never reach their destination.

Why would we want to thank them?

Since the September 11 attacks and the anthrax scare, the Pentagon and the Postal Service have refused to deliver mail addressed simply to "Any Wounded Soldier" for fear terrorists or opponents of the war might send toxic substances or demoralizing messages. The cards and letters are returned to sender or thrown away unopened by the postal service. Now if they could only do the same thing with junk mail.

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