Meditation on a Christmas card

Books could be written about the sociology of Christmas cards.  Just as Christmas itself has been annexed by consumerism, and cut off from its roots, so the business of Christmas cards has widened in import until it now stands as a microcosm of late twentieth century life.

For example sending cards has become a surrogate for the extended nuclear family’s earlier rituals of bonding.  We no longer assert the tribe by gathering but by remembering, an act commemorated by a token missive sent second class once a year.  It is a pledge; it says “you are of our group.”  For non-family members, this ritual can attain even more significance.  To be sent a card and not to have sent one is not only a gross solecism, it is a signal defeat in the lists of social jousting.  Hence the convoluted schemes of bluff and double-bluff as prospective recipients attempt to second-guess their friends’ and colleagues’ intentions.  Without such precautions they are forced to send cards to everyone.

When the card list has been drawn up, it is then necessary to choose the right card.  With the burgeoning of choice, this is no easy matter Once upon a time pictures of mangers and angels would have done; today we are embarrassed by religion.  It shows our Christmas up for the shoddy materialistic display it has become.  It is no accident that commerce prefers to call it by the anonymous and sanitised name of “Xmas”.

Usually some blameless winter scene is chosen.  This is certain to be safe, since the image nearly always depicts snow, by now an almost mythical accompaniment to Christmas.  As a mere fantasy scene, we are well-equipped to deal with it; our response are automatic and infallible.

Unfortunately most card manufacturers have tumbled this, and produce minor variants of the same.  So the next factor comes into play: vanity.  A few years back, the charities hit on the plan of competing with purely commercial concerns by producing their own Christmas cards, but with a special added ingredient which made them unbeatable.  This was the warm glow purchasers felt at the base of the heart, secure in the knowledge that not only were they fulfilling social obligations by buying and sending the dratted things, they were also market out as magnanimous.

And so the great race began.  Receiving a Christmas card became an act of abetting: by taking  you acknowledged that others had given.  Your only defence was to retaliate.  A hierarchy evolved, though one that nobody would admit to.  Cards supporting donkey sanctuaries inevitably scored less than those helping the aged.  Leper colonies notched up the points, but anything to do with children tended to romp away.  After all, Christmas is a time for children, as we are constantly reminded by toy manufacturers.

The net result of this classical Darwinian evolution is that what was once a charming, personalised gesture has become a frantic competition.  To make the New Yorker in us all feel totally at home, this contest even has “parameters” by which we are judged: timing, quantity and quality.  This, then, is my Christmas card – because it lacks all of them.

(20.12.86)

See also Moody Sonnets – Happy Christmas

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