I worry about the Christmas card industry.
Everyone this year seems to be sending photos instead of cards. You know. The ones where you have to use a magnifying glass to see faces and even then you don’t know who they are!
I do admire the efforts of writers of the traditional letter – that document complete with tiny photos urging us to enjoy vicariously their many trips and adventures.
- “Wonderful experience seeing the glories of _________, eating fermented_______which is their culture’s traditional food.
- Kudos to the service personnel who transported us so quickly to the hospital where the hours in the emergency room weren’t that bad!
- And even though our luggage was lost we managed to find bargains at the airport gift shop——-“
Well that is not my thing. Not that I have a thing. Perhaps my life seems boring in comparison. Though I enjoy writing a blog every once in a while.
So I am not grumpy.
I do enjoy a lot of the holiday season. But in retrospect it seemed to work better when the kids were tiny.
In those days, Christmas music didn’t start overwhelming the airways until after Thanksgiving. Santa was for real. Plus you actually ENTERED a store to buy a gift or you made one (oh the horror!)
Now everyone picks out their presents online, complete with sku info, places the order and acts surprised when they open them.
Watching young people’s nascent consumerism- I think I used that word right -(nascent -just coming into existence and beginning to display signs of future potential.) is hardly uplifting. Tear open present, look at toy/gift, move to next one. Repeat.
But at least they won’t have to return them. Although if they did Amazon makes that chore fairly easy. Who knew Santa’s elves delivered by drone? Taking over the world one delivery a time. Screw the magi- why didn’t they just bake cookies.
Speaking of baking
The family does want to continue some traditions- dipping dates with granddad and making kolocky cookies with grandma, but hey everyone is just too busy . Does this sound familiar?
So cookie dough sits in the frig for a while until you decide to bake it yourself rather than toss it. The bread dough ornaments sit waiting to be painted when things get less hectic – yada yada. Let’s not forget granddad’s high octane eggnog. Not for the kiddies, but it keeps grandad and grandma and some selected adults happy well into the new year. Traditions are good.
We started a new tradition this year. We bought an artificial tree at last year’s post season sale. It is PRE-LIT! I hung our ornaments and am determined to leave them on and wrap up the tree carefully for storage after Christmas.
No more crawling on the floor on our aching knees while watering the fresh tree or finding old pine needles stuck in the carpet in April. Time for new traditions like watching the Hallmark movie ‘Christmas Kiss’ so I can spot my artwork in the dining room scenes (a little plug there!) Those extra bread dough ornaments might be painted pink for Easter. I may actually call people by phone whom I’ve not spoken with in years!
And of course painting something totally different to remind myself that the best is yet to come. I still have a few years to catch up to Grandma Moses!
So happy, merry holidays. Take a breath, then start prepping for New Year’s Eve and Day, Superbowl Sunday, Groundhog Day, Casimir Pulaski Day, Valentine’s Day, and so forth and so on.
Long winded as ever,
Gloria
