It's not business, it's personal

I have something to rant about, and I'm not sure where else I can do it. I don't want it to be perceived as directed at any particular person, which it might be if I wrote it on Facebook or the like. Here goes:

I hate getting nonpersonalized holiday cards.

You know the ones. Usually, these days, a single-panel photocard with a greeting and signature all pre-printed. Not one pen mark on the thing, front or back.

Sometimes, it's a traditional folding card but the sender's name is signed at the bottom with no indication whom it's to. It's clear that these senders just went through and signed their entire stack of cards assembly-line style and stuffed them into envelopes.

In both cases, the message is that the sender only thought about the recipient long enough to write the recipient's name and address on the envelope -- unless that was automated, too, in which case there was only as much thought as it takes to make a label-merge document. Or to reprint last year's labels.

I don't understand it. Holiday cards are not mandatory; they're optional means of telling people in your life that you're thinking of them during the holidays. If you cannot take the time to write "Dear ___," and sign your name in each card, perhaps holiday cards are not for you.

My mother wrote many, many holiday cards every year. And every year, she put in a "Dear __" line and a few words before signing at the bottom. Oh, wait -- I lied. There was one year in our overlapping lifetimes that she did not: her final Christmas. She was too weak and tired from her cancer and her chemo, so she just signed at the bottom. Just that once. She said to me, "I hope people will understand."

I wrote 107 holiday cards this year. In each and every one, I wrote a "Dear __" line at the top and a personalized sentence or two before signing at the bottom. If I didn't think the recipient merited that courtesy, I didn't send them a card at all.

I realize I'm in the minority on this, given that fully 1/3 of the cards I received this year fell into one of these categories (all-preprinted photocard panel or assembly-line-signed folding card). But I had to get it out. Receiving such a card from you does not make me feel thought-of during this holiday season. It makes me feel like an obligation.

The years without a Christmas

Yay, it's time yet again for me to whine about being an orphan!

I have a friend who flat-out hates Christmas because it makes her miss her late mom so much. I totally understand that, but it's not the case for me. Personally I don't and, so far, can't hate Christmas. But I gotta say, since they've been gone, it just hasn't been the same.

I feel like I try and try, so hard, every year. (This is only my third dadless Christmas and fourth momless, so "every year" isn't really as dramatic as it sounds.) I put up the tree, and decorate it. I throw decorations all over the house; it looks like a tinsel factory exploded. I carefully set up my (mom's) Nativity set, and defend it to all the infidels who criticize its scope -- you know who you are. (The Dude claims emphatically that Luke Skywalker was not at the birth of Jesus.) (I retort that there is no Luke Skywalker piece and indeed every figure in my set is a Biblical figure.) (Other wiseacres chime in, "where does the Bible mention cats?") (I say dignifiedly, "I'm not up on my Bible studies but each figure came with a description of how they fit into Biblical times, so I'm sure they have it on good authority that cats were present.") (OK, I do admit that St. Francis of Assisi's life did not in fact overlap with Jesus's. But he's my favorite saint, so, bugger off.) (And why the hell shouldn't I hide baby Jesus in the loft until Christmas morning? In this tableau he hasn't been born yet, people. But I digress.)

I write and send dozens (maybe hundreds; I need to get this year's final count) of Christmas cards. Well, "holiday" cards, since several of them go to non-Christians. I buy too many gifts and wrap them reasonably festively, choosing from a way-too-large array of wrapping paper designs. (I've never understood people whose gifts are all wrapped in the same paper. I don't object to the idea, but I know I'll never get down to just one roll. I'm still rotating between rolls bought in the 80s.)

I listen to Christmas music until I can't stand another minute. (If I have to hear one more version of "My Grown-Up Christmas List" I'm gonna lose it.) I dig out my cheesy Christmas earrings and lapel pins. I bake cookies, even, sometimes. But I just don't feel it.

Sure, the "magic" of Christmas from childhood tends to dissipate once we're older -- we become surly teenagers who think everything is lame, then adults whose parents have to wake us up Christmas morning because we'd rather sleep 'til noon than get up at 5 a.m. to open presents like when we were kids. (Or was that just me?)

But even up until and through the Christmas of 2006, I still felt Christmas. I still did most of the old routine that we honed over almost 30 years as a family. I went to Mass on Christmas Eve in the same church, sitting in the same part of the church, as I had every year I could remember. I watched the Sesame Street Christmas special like I did every Christmas Eve after Mass (on the same rickety old VHS tape we recorded it on when I was little). I still had a little spark of excitement when I woke up the next morning and realized, "ooh! It's Christmas!" Even with my mom gone that year, and my dad super-depressed because of it, the two of us made a point of keeping things as much the same as we could, and it worked for me. I woke up in the same bed I'd woken up in every single Christmas morning of my life. (Well, I probably woke up in a crib the first few years.) I had as ridiculous a number of presents to open as ever, because my parents were insane (and it was always mostly my dad anyway, and with my mom gone he just bought that much extra for me). I put on the Christmas music and dad and I settled into "our spots" in the living room and tore into our loot. Dad and I argued over which of our new movies we'd watch first on Christmas Day. It was the same exact routine every year.

I don't think I realized, even that last year, how much I loved and, truly, needed that simple routine. Dad died eight months later and one of the very first things I did after he died was make plans to go away for Christmas. What I wanted to do was go back to my empty house alone, but even then I knew that was too macabre. So I decided to splurge and take a trip. It was fine, but it wasn't Christmas to me. Then last year it was The Dude's "turn" (since he'd come with me instead of hanging with his family in 2007) and we went to his parents' house. This year he recognized I might exercise my prerogative to go away again, but I decided we could stay in town, with the caveat that I wanted to wake up in my own bed (not at his parents' house). So we've arranged that to everyone's satisfaction and I'm pretty pleased with the plan. It should be a nice couple of days. But it won't feel like Christmas.

I'm not sure what else I can do to feel the old Christmas feeling. I guess the first step will be to let go of the idea that the only true Christmas (for me) is the one I grew up with, because that is gone. It is not coming back, because it is inextricably linked to people who are no longer living and a house that is no longer mine.

People say their kids' Christmas excitement is contagious. I hope that is the case if/when we have kids. I suppose I will have to (continue to) fake Christmas spirit to get theirs going, and then hopefully one year they will start being excited for Christmas without my assistance, and then hopefully they can get me excited. Maybe eventually it will stop feeling forced.

For the birds

I never took much notice of birds before. In New York, as far as I could tell, it was mostly pigeons. Actually, now that I think about it, we often heard exotic calls in our small, overgrown (Queens) backyard, which my mom and I referred to as "the rain forest," but I never saw anything but pigeons. And ducks and geese, if we went to "the country" (like, Westchester).

A year or two into living in the DC area, I had an encounter that charmed me. I drove into DC on a weekend (for some Bar class I think) and parked in my firm's parking garage. As I got out of the car, a little bird flew over to me and started looking around expectantly. I said (yes, out loud), "oh, let me go upstairs to the office and get you some crackers!" I did, and when I got back to my car, I didn't see the bird. Dejected, I called, "little bird! Where'd you go?" and it flew over to me from a rafter. It was so cute! (Sadly, it did not like the crackers.)

The Dude's mom and aunt are into birds, and they've rubbed off on me a bit. His parents have several bird feeders in their backyard, set up for easy viewing through their picture window. It mesmerizes me whenever I'm at their house -- especially seeing so many colorful birds stopping by. Maybe cardinals are fairly ordinary, but they seem very exotic to me.

His mom gave me a spare window feeder she had, and I set it up a few months ago without any takers. Then they got me a fancy stand-alone feeder setup for my birthday. The Dude and I didn't get it installed until a couple weeks after my birthday, so about three weeks ago. We were both disappointed that no birds were coming, but his mom and aunt told us they eventually would find us.

And finally they have!





And the piece de resistance:


Unfortunately it's a fuzzy photo, but -- a cardinal!