Some Thoughts on Christmas Cards...

I have been sick for the past three weeks (see previous post). I have also been sending out my Christmas cards.

This year, I have been an envelope licker. No because I enjoy the taste of envelope glue or am opposed to wasting tape. Just because I am too lazy to get up and find tape. Or to get water and a sponge and moisten the sticky. My tongue is always wherever the open envelope happens to be. So I lick.

This means I have been spreading my cold from Connecticut down to South Carolina and all the way west to Texas.

I am an epidemic.

So far I have sent out over forty Christmas cards. And I'm still going. This takes up a lot of paper. And money. Money for stamps, money for cards. Wouldn't it be better to just say to people: "Hey. I still love you. But I'm donating all my Christmas card money to charity this year." Think of the funds! Think of the holiday spirit!

Then again, you can't display verbal decla- rations of love and friend- ship. You need a shiny, little card. Because in the end, Christmas cards are really a popularity contest that we don't talk about. We don't tell our parents or people on the street: "I got six cards today! How many did you get?". But we walk around feeling smug all day. And we have a spot in our home or bedroom where they are all taped or tacked or neatly set up besides each other so our popularity is displayed to any visitors. I've been putting mine in the dining room.

Consider this post an electronic Holiday Card to all you readers out there. Many of you will be getting the disease-filled kind in the mail any day now.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!