Christmas Cards in July

It's almost Christmas time and what better way to celebrate the commercial Christmas creep than by getting your Christmas cards in order! In Summer. This is something I never do. Not even in November.


Don't get me wrong. I mean to send out Christmas cards. I painstakingly arrange address lists. I check them once. I check them twice. I decide which people I know are naughty or nice. Because, you know, Santa Claus. He's coming to town. I even buy stamps. That's usually as far as I get.


The next step involves buying cards, addressing envelopes, licking them and sending them. Let's ignore the fact that America was made aware of the dangers of licking too many envelopes by the good folks at Seinfeld a few years back. I mean that's bad enough. Instead let's focus on buying cards.


Once upon a time in my Texas high school art class the teacher informed us that we the students, would be designing the school district's Christmas card for the year. It had to be indicative of rural Texas. It had to be religiously and culturally benign (since Christmas is all about religious and cultural benignedness....), and it had to showcase the talent of the students in the district. Fair enough.


I set about drawing up a nice card with candles on it. Nice candles. Pretty candles. The kind of candles Yankee Candle later made into a thriving business. I worked hard.

A week later the entries were all in and the administration had flat out denied all offerings. The teacher was incensed. Christmas potpourri incensed! I distinctly remember her sitting on her desk and going through each card and berating us for not stepping it up. Most of the cards earned a nope. No. Not even! They didn't even look at this one! Nada. My card earned a "they considered this one but discarded it as not enough what they were looking for". They being the grinches on the board.


Eventually my art teacher got one of the senior students to come up with a nice bucolic rural Texas scene of a dilapidated barn. It wasn't even covered in snow. Merry Christmas. Err Happy Holidays. Joyous whatever.


As a result of this "trauma" I have a hard time picking out Christmas cards. Do I get the beautiful ones with the Star of Bethlehem shining down on poor Mary sitting on a camel? How about that nice one with the Chistmas Tree all lit up and covered in bugles? I like the pastoral scenes of sleds dashing through the snow and children walking with their dog though Old Man Witherby's nicely manicured snow lawn in fictional New England/Wisconsin/Minnesota. Those are nice. Grandma Moses meets Thomas Kinkade and they all have hot chocolate and sing carols. Seasonal!


But here I am pawing through the offerings in my local Target getting in the way of young mother's and excited kids and I can't find anything with a rural Texas barn sans snow on it. What I am thinking is, sure! This Christmasy gobbedly gook is all well and fine for a major American retailer but not fine enough for a tiny Texas town in the 80's??? I'll show you! Grinch! Scrooge! Bah! Humbug! grrr ahhh!!! I might have been foaming at the mouth. There might have been some ripping and such. Some say a nice ornament display got knocked over. There are some kids that might have been alarmed and a baby might have cried.


In the end I was on my knees in front of a plastic manger with the remains of Christmas cards and wrapping paper everywhere. Some poor lady was comforting her baby. Her husband was helping me up. He was wearing a hoodie. I thanked him, backed awkwardly into a plastic camel, and gave him the package of mints I had meant to buy. He told me the checkout counter was a mad house. No room at the registers. Then the scene cleared and I woke up.


I didn't buy any cards last year. Post Traumatic Seasonal Adolescence Memory Disorder. Maybe I'll try again next year. Online. You can't shoot your eye out online can you?