It's January -- Where Do the Cards Go?

It is the first week of January. If you had a Christmas tree, perhaps like me, you took yours down this past weekend. The paper towel-roll angel, my son's pre-school holiday project, is wrapped in her special tissue for another year. The lights are coiled around a Rolling Stone magazine from 1987 with the Talking Heads on the cover ("Is America's Best Band Burned Out?") I am glad to have my living room back, and to have the holidays and their lubricated rituals behind me. There will be no trace of Christmas in this house. The sugar cookies rattling around the tin? Gone. The leftover eggnog? Down the drain. Gingerbread houses? See ya. Except for the cards. They stick around.

There is no decent way to throw away the holiday greetings with the rest of Christmas passed. Last year, when I finally tossed the whole collection, it was almost summertime. A family of beautiful kids who had the misfortune of being on top of the card stack still glowed with smiles from the slopes of Steamboat Springs, or perhaps it was the steps of the Hagia Sofia -- I don't remember which. I had to tie up the garbage bag instantly, lest chicken bones or coffee grounds end up on their lovely faces. My daughter caught me mid-act and asked, "Mom? Why are you throwing away our Christmas cards?" I answered, "It's May, honey. It's time." And yet it seemed profane or disrespectful to put these images -- lovingly planned, posed, shot, selected, signed, addressed and mailed -- in the trash.

In fact, long after presents have been returned and resolutions have been tossed, holiday cards seem to keep rolling in. Now, we are getting a whole new influx of New Year's cards from those with a more relaxed deadline. Soon we'll receive a bunch of family-photo valentine cards. Last year we even got a Spring card. The bunch was beaming ear-to-ear from the Dome of the Rock, documenting "Our Easter in the Holy Land," if I remember correctly. Or maybe it was from a catamaran off Grand Bahama Island. Anyway, it was one or the other, but the message was clear: they wanted to register on our consciousness before another year zoomed by.

I keep my holiday cards in a Mexican wire basket laced with green glass beads that is known as The Card Bowl. My daughter wants to string them up on a length of garland, to line the house with grinning family portraits. But I love making a pile, to fill up the bowl with pictures of my friends' children, to see how much so-and-so has grown. Of course, the duds are in there too -- the ones with printed greetings from the people who deliver mulch, or heating oil, but these are space-fillers, adding nothing but bulk to the deck. The picture cards are the ones loaded with mystery, and meaning. Frequently, they are compositionally brilliant and are works of fine photography, especially when the kids are arranged on the porch during the magic hour on an October afternoon.

Photo cards have become an entrenched holiday ritual. This was not always the case. During my childhood, my mother sent out five holiday picture cards -- one every couple of years or so. It was always painstaking. Christmas Card Picture Day was not to be messed with; one year my three sisters and I wore matching red velvet dresses. Another year, my mother gave up and sent her season's greetings with a picture of our house, covered with snow. Back then, I was not happy with the idea of ending up in someone's card pile, opening myself up to all sorts of examination and prying eyes. As a teenager, this was unthinkable.

I suppose then, as now, parents were proud of their children, and wanted their old friends to see the results of their hard labor as mothers and fathers. These days every family is iconic, and all parents and their children are as curious as they are competitive with each other. No one means to brag, of course. Children deserve parental pride and loveliness speaks for itself. And if a photo opportunity arises during a summer trip to the Acropolis, well then, we have ourselves a holiday card winner.

But you never know where it will hit someone on any given day. What if I were childless? Would I feel joy, or jealousy, at one family's fortunate lot? Could I look without a bit of envy at their perfect offspring, captured without a care in the world in a cafe in Siena? If I were depressed, suffering, or alone? One year, my daughter was not well. Cards poured in all the way through January. Our family's troubles were not relieved by the many holiday wishes. I saw these happy, perfect -- and usually blonde -- people, and felt assaulted. It wasn't fair. I resolved never to send a photo card again.

Last year, I changed my mind. My kids sat for my photographer friend in our backyard. I came to realize that the pictures tell you little except where you went on vacation, or what someone's child looks like now that the braces are off. Photographs cannot pick up the pain and trouble that is in every family. But they connect the years, one to the next, and help make sense of the passing time.

Next year around mid-December we will start all over. My husband will curse at the tree lights that will get tangled up sitting stock-still in the attic. I will unfurl the magazine and re-read the article on the Talking Heads, and tell my kids again about the summer I saw them four times while travelling around Europe. They might not listen to me. But I know they will look at the stack of picture cards, at the annual appearance of some people they barely know, but who provide some thread of familiarity every year. I will have sent our own Christmas card with haste and not much humility, and will try not to wonder when and how it will end up in someone's trash, after the lights and candles come down.

Comments

[JScott]

Save those pic cards, note who they are and when you got it. It helps a lot to use them to remember who, when etc. because as you get older YOU FORGET even without Alzheimers.

[wadenelson1]

Christmas cards are recycled by the same guy who re-rolls up all the yellow "Police Line -- Do Not Cross" tape left behind at crime scenes.

It's a tough job but he does a good job of it, considering.

[amybean]

I stick the cards in the storage box when I put the ornaments away. When I pull the box out the next year, there they are! I like having the kid pictures from over the years, and the reminder of all the years of friendships. I don't get a ton of cards, so this is easy on the storage system. I send my cards via email, and people can choose to print it or not.

[mistlesuede]

I should have used the word "have" not "has."

[RRonin]

My wife's been an evironmentalist all her life, and didn't know it. She has saved every card she's ever received.

[ORSunshine]

Am I the only person that saves the picture cards in an album? Maybe I do it because my childhood home burned to the ground when I was 8, and we lost all the phtos of us... the friends and family who had shared photos from years past allowed us to have a few memories resurrected.

[medardo]

good article- whew! how many more innocent trees? the landfill of nostalgia! Is this a covertly green piece? Need more of this.