Dear Santa Blogs:
For years I have enjoyed your advice on how used books and/or used postcards can make excellent gifts at this festive time of year. I have a slightly different problem. I am finally getting around to thinking about possibly arranging to get ready to do my Christas cards. Have you any advice for me?
Postal Holiday Laborer
Dear Post-holidays:
I presume you WILL get this done before Labor Day? There WAS one great writer who is said to have mailed all of HIS Christmas cards in June, allowing people to apply them to the Christmas before OR the Christmas after: either way, he had taken care of his obligations.
Now, Christmas postcards have existed as long as postcards, as a bargain for those who didn’t want to pay two whole cents to send good wishes across the country. You can still find those, but I figure you probably bought actual greeting cards already in last January’s clearance sales and, if you can find them again, merely want something to write inside. Our Dutch kids have plenty of suggestions, including the one above and the one below, which offer excellent alternatives to those long family newsletters explaining how Junior has qualified for the U.S. Olympic Tiddlywink team, and how last year’s Christmas newsletter was a runner=-up for the Nobel Prize.
All you REALLY need, of course, is a phrase or two about how pleased you are to remember your buddy after a year that worked hard to knock all pleasant thoughts from your brain.
The Dutch Kids frequently expressed thoughts where all you need do is substitute “Christmas card” for “postage card.”
We need not consider the loaded question of whether your friend will read any more than the return address or the signature and just mutter “Ah, there’s another pizook I forgot to send a card to.” But there is no need to write anything more than this, unless you have friends who really expect you to be witty and clever (fewer than you think, in my experience.) The basics will do for most of your list.
Don’t forget, either, that many Christmas carols and cards link this holiday with the next. “We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.” There’s always something to say about the prosperity of the coming year: that boat, Buick, baby, or ballot referendum your friend has been wishing form say.
When in doubt, Postal, whether sending cards by email, text, or old-fashioned cardboard, just remember how happy you are that both you and the recipient are still alive to exchange pleasantries, and let yourself be guided by that.
Blogsy Babbles 