In my opinion, there is a proper way to send holiday cards and a ‘not proper’ way to send holiday cards.
To send a holiday card properly, you will schedule your appointment with a professional photographer in mid-July. This will allow you a bit of time to coordinate your outfit with the entire family and ensure your perfect apple cheeked toddler is perfectly chubby prior to your actual photo shoot, which will occur at the height of autumnal beauty on the most perfectly sunshine dappled day, at the intersection of a perfectly crackly wheat field and a perfectly bloom heavy sunflower patch.
Because you were able to preplan mid-July, by Halloween you have the digital copy of your family photo to upload to a holiday card printing website, along with your well thought out, heart warming and straight up lovely as sh!t “card words” that you will have preprinted on the perfectly calculated number of cards and delivered to your doorstep with enough time to address and mail your cards the day after Thanksgiving with current year holiday themed stamps perfectly placed upon the coordinating envelopes.
If this is your way, then kudos to you.
Standing ovation.
Tip o’ the hat.
You’re killing it.
If this is not your way. You’re sending holiday cards ‘not properly’.
Chances are, you’ve spent the time between July and Halloween poolside or couchside with many fruity grown up drinks in your hand. There can be no other reason that you would let your holiday card schedule slide like this. No amount of Netflix, housework, laundry, child shuttling or actual paid work should be keeping you from staying on task.
Did you then spend the time between Halloween and the Winter Solstice doing post office math, trying to determine what the actual last date and time you can place your cards in a mailbox and have them arrive by Christmas Eve is? You are a ‘not properly’ person.
You purchased one 12 count box of holiday cards one week prior to that cut off date, set it aside until four days out, then came to the realization that your address list is about 40 people long.
You then rush to the drug store for more boxed wine and those delicious minty chocolatey things you can only find around Christmas and see a muddled pile of boxed holiday cards half on the floor, half on the shelves. 70% off? Buy one more box of 12. Compliment yourself on being fiscally responsible.
One day before the cut off date, begin addressing the cards. You’ve only got 24 cards and your address list has grown to 55. This is when you get to edit your family and friends.
You can pretend that you’re not enjoying it, but the cheap wine and glitter off of your drug store cards is putting you in a fa la la la great mood and it’s hard to not smile a perfect tiny smile when you cross off that one family member you can’t stand and another who’s children you’ve never met and another who hugged you too hard when you were a kid….keep editing out another 29. This shouldn’t be too hard because you’re a ‘not proper’ person. Choke down the joy you’re having. It’s ‘not proper’ this time of year.
Once your list is perfectly edited try to put some great “card words” in. Don’t think about what you’re going to write, just let the words tumble out of your head and through the pen. Make sure to spell the ‘very’ before ‘Merry Christmas!’ as ‘verry’ at least four times. Wish someone a joyous Thanksgiving!
Sometimes, it’s good to spell the names of your remaining family and friends completely wrong. You’re using a gel pen, of course, so it smears easy…just smear the name and try to write the correct spelling over it. Mix and match your Aunt’s and Uncle’s spouses. Make sure you put the name of an ex-wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend in place of current wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend.
Now, realize it’s one day past the mail cut off, you might as well put the pedal to the metal and rush through the stamping. Make sure they’re
not put on straight. Place some of them upside down. Run out of stamps, dig through your junk drawer and try to find fifty 1¢ stamps from your
apartment in the 90’s that you know you moved with you to your new home and then again to your next new home. It’s been, like, 25 years since you’ve seen them. Give up searching. Edit one more time.
Drive to the post office in a blaze of perfectly glittery glory. Try to shove all of the cards into the mail slot at once. It’s a proven fact that if they don’t all go in together an angel loses it’s wings. Don’t lose an angel’s wings. Shove hard. Use science if you have to.
You’ve done it! You’ve sent cards ‘not properly’.
Welcome to my club. We have boxed wine and minty chocolatey things.
Mommy Quits. 