I don’t dig the holidays. I don’t really ooh at Christmas lights or inflatable Santas from Walmart. I don’t put up a Christmas tree or any holiday decorations. I even told my family not to get me anything for Christmas (thankfully, my parents still got me Trader Joes fair trade coffee – yum!). I’m not waging a war on Christmas or telling strangers to get their celebrations off my lawn; I just don’t think I need a holiday and a credit card to tell my family I love them.

This year I decided to go against my Scrooge lifestyle and send out Christmas cards. A big reason was that I’m beginning to lose track of friends I’ve had over the years, and Facebook status updates just don’t cut it as far as keeping in touch. Despite their potential for being abused, Christmas cards are a nice reminder that you value the friendship of others so much you spent postage on them.

Christmas cards also have a very introspective quality, as it makes you think about all that has transpired in the past year. 2008 was a hard year for everyone in some way or another, and I was no exception. Don’t get me wrong; between traveling to Taiwan, meeting family I haven’t seen in 23 years, seeing my grandmother turn 90, meeting my nephew, joining evil leagues, and getting comments from celebrities, I have little to complain about. However I’ve also watched everyone (including myself) have their money evaporate, had friends lose jobs, homes, and loved ones, and had my own emotional rough spots to work through¹. If we walked into 2008 thinking anything was possible, we walked into 2009 wondering if we’ll ever have it back.

Despite my anti-holiday stance, I think the Christmas cards are here to stay. Sorry if I missed anyone; it’s most likely because I lost your address. You should send it to me… or give me a call while you’re at it. I’d really like to stay in touch.

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¹I’d like to thank Drew, Ryan D, Chad, Brian, Kurt, Matt, Mary, and Nick for helping me out this year. You all are the best of friends.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 at 4:38 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.