Sometimes I miss having a job. The whole seeing people and talking to them aspect. I’m a sociable person. I like hanging out and chatting shit. Then I remember I’d have to go to the same place (even if it’s raining) at the same time (too early) every day, and for way too many hours (eight of them? are you serious???), and I get over it.
Hmm, okay, so I forgot I’ve never actually had a job like that. It’s been a long time, but I’ve never worked in an office. I was a bartender before all this. My shifts were random as hell, often went for 13 hours, and ended after midnight. Does that ruin my point? No, let’s keep going. I can make this work. Bar staff celebrate Christmas, too, once they’ve finished working it.
The worst part of conventional jobs, aside from having the way you spend literally half of your waking hours decided for you, is the expectation that you will participate in the worst of Christmas traditions – even worse than listening to that Mariah Carey song 18 times in a row or eating cake made out of fruit.
Christmas cards. What is the point? Don’t tell me it’s an expression of love or gratitude or affection or any of that crap.
Dear [insert name],
[Generic seasonal Hallmark greeting]
From [or maybe ‘Love’ if you’re feeling exceptionally festive, or maybe nothing at all if you’re not] [Your name]
Come on, now. That’s not an expression of anything except perhaps ‘I got these cards in a 2-for-1 deal at the supermarket, and I see you every day so you might as well have one’. How is that better than sending a WhatsApp message or a text on Christmas morning? It isn’t! At least the text message says something you wrote yourself, even if it’s just sup babez, hope u eat lots of good food today!!! 🎄🎉🥂
You don’t send cards because you care. You send them because you feel like you have to. Right? Or is that just me? Well, that’s a misnomer to begin with, because I don’t send Christmas cards, and these days nobody expects me to, which is nice.
My Scottish family, who I’ve spent Christmas with every year since I moved up here over a decade ago, learned quickly that I do not do cards, and they’re fine with it. They might give me one on the day, and I’ll put it in the recycle bin as soon as I get home, because who puts Christmas cards up when the day is already over? Okay, fine. Maybe I’ll display it on my bookcase until the end of the year. Depends on my mood. But I prefer our annual wine exchange. Argentinian Malbec? Perfect, thanks. Here’s yours.
My English family might try to send me cards if they knew my address, and that’s why I’ve never told them. (That’s not why. It would be weird to just tell them for no reason though, wouldn’t it?) My brother and I have a tacit agreement to never send each other cards for any occasion. He did mention a year or so ago that it might be nice to start giving each other gifts because we know each other and what we like so well, so maybe we’ll do that. But not cards, though. Never cards.
My English cousins both have kids, one of whom I haven’t met. Is that bad? He must be about six now. I mean, it’s not because I don’t want to, I just haven’t been home. Still, the only kid who gets anything from me is my niece, because she’s the best and I adore her. But even so, she gets birthday cards, not Christmas cards. Kids don’t care about Christmas cards. Not when there’s a pile of presents waiting to be opened. When you’re little, cards are only good if they have money in them. The reverse isn’t true, of course: as an adult, getting a card from a kid is the greatest thing ever. It’s one of the few kinds of card worth a damn.
While we’re on the subject, you know what else I hate? Thank you cards. You don’t need to thank me. If I gave you something, it’s because I wanted to, not because I wanted your gratitude. Just enjoy the thing I gave you, okay? That’s all I need. (And if you don’t, that’s fine too, and there’s even less reason to send a thank you card. Just donate the gift or whatever and forget about it.) There’s no universe in which a thank you card will ever match the video my brother sent me of my niece screaming IT’S A TELESCOPE! when she opened my present to her.
Likewise, I’m never gonna send you a thank you card. I’ll say thanks in person the next time I see you, which is much better, because we’ll also get to hug and catch up. (Tangent: it annoys me that when men and women get married, it’s always the wife who sends the thank you cards. I got one from my cousin’s wife earlier this year. Why didn’t he write it, since he’s the one related to me, hmm? I’d rather just not get anything. I mean, she may have wanted to write the cards, I suppose, which is a bizarre concept but presumably a possibility. I’m gonna continue to be irrationally mad about it nonetheless, as is my right.)
When I was a teenager at school, everybody would hand out cards during December. Everyone would give ‘em to everyone in a flurry of glitter and platitudes. One year I decided I would only give them to people who gave them to me, so I shoved a pack of blank cards in my backpack and any time someone gave me a card, I’d withdraw one of my own from my bag, scribble their name in it and give it to them right there and then. That did not go down well. Apparently people do not like it when you do that. Which is understandable, but how is it any less hollow than what everyone else was doing?
The last time I posted a Christmas card was in 2016. It was only one, to my nan. She was the sole person I sent cards to every year, because I would never hear the end of it if I didn’t. She died a couple of weeks after I sent her that card. She was old and showing signs of dementia, and did not remember that I had sent her it. Our last ever conversation was her giving me shit for not sending her a Christmas card. A lifetime of sending her cards to avoid this exact situation, only for it to mean nothing when it mattered the most.
Before she suddenly fell ill and was rushed to hospital, I’d already booked a hire car – or maybe a train ticket, I can’t remember now – to go and visit her. As the only one of her grandchildren who’d moved away from our hometown, I always made a point to go and stay with her for a week once or twice a year, which probably resulted in me spending more time with her than any of the others, minute for minute. Isn’t that more meaningful than sending a generic card full of flowery words I would never say? Those were her favourite kind; she really took those Hallmark words to heart, even though most people never even read them. I should’ve picked more carefully.
My nan was the kind of person who cared too much about what other people thought. She valued having reams of Christmas cards strung up on her walls so she could show everyone how many friends she had, how many people loved her. Or maybe it was to remind herself. She was a lonely woman, I think, especially as she got older and everyone she knew in the village she’d spent her whole life in died around her, faster and faster as more time passed.
Perhaps I should’ve sent her more cards. Whole packs of them, so she could still fill the walls as the years ticked on. For every absent card, a replacement – dozens of cheerful, festive rectangles to colour the walls she sat alone and stared at on the dark winter nights. For all the people who aren’t around to love you any more, I’ll love you this much extra. It wouldn’t have been true, of course. But maybe it would’ve meant something – to her, if not to me.
Ben definitely wrote at least half of the thank you cards after our wedding. He also wants to send Christmas cards out every year (we don't always make it happen). Just a card lovin' guy! I will help, but my priority is gingerbread house.
Here in Argentina we don't send cards, either for Christmas or birthdays. They'd probably never arrive anyway, so we have big parties instead, which is a lot more fun!