Card Games

It's Christmas Card time! (I like to get it out of the way early.) Christmas card time is never easy, but - like hitting yourself with a hammer - it feels so good when it's over.
The first dilemma of Xmas Card Time is who we're going to send cards to. Family, of course. But who else? Neighbors? Previous neighbors from the last house? What about the house before that? Coworkers? Former coworkers? People you haven't talked to in years but for whom you still retain generally positive feelings? As is generally the case, that works itself out in particulars as opposed to the general categories. This is more complicated for me than it probably should be - I'd like to like everyone, but not everyone is likable.
The second dilemma is whether or not to write and include a newsletter. I generally don't. Anybody who actually cares what is going on in my life already knows, and why waste the time and energy on the others? On the other hand, this has been an eventful year. Really, really eventful. Again, though, everyone who cares already knows this, as well as quite few people who don't. I generally enjoy other people's, but that doesn't mean they'd enjoy mine. On the balance, we probably won't do a newsletter.
Third and most fraught, picking out cards. For years now, I have been hampered in card choosing by the variety of charities who send us their packets of hideous cards. Right around the beginning of November, just when I am starting to shop around a bit and plan what kind of cards I would like to buy, we get roughly a metric ton of cards in the mail. This would be fine if they were even a little attractive, but sadly they are not. They are always smarmy, featuring winsome children and/or winsome woodland creatures, or country-style snowpersons, or some other denizen of Darlingland. I hate them with a fiery passion, yet I am compelled to use them. How can I justify wasting good money on cards when these perfectly good ones are right here? I can't, so I am stuck handing the wretched things out. Why not give them to old folks homes or some other organization that could use them, a reasonable person would ask. Because they don't want them either, is why. I tried palming them off, and could not find a taker. I suppose I could throw them away, but decades of environmental awareness training will not let me do this either. This year I was extra-excited by the possibilities, as we had moved and I believed the charities would not find us in time. I was wrong.
Fourth, timing. I generally like to get them signed and addressed and in the mail on Thanksgiving weekend. This gets it comfortably out of the way, and also lets me be first in something. This year I was punked by my mother-in-law, who sent us hers last week just to get me. Next year she gets hers by Halloween! My first impulse was to send her 2009 card right after New Years' Eve, but that is premature. Halloween should do fine - also this gives us room to move if the early-card-sending war escalates. This year I got most of them addressed this weekend, and am sending them out Monday. My seasonal instinct is all messed up by the short days. Also, the mail will take probably an extra week, so from the recipients' perspective, not much will have changed. They will still get a smarmy, newsletter-free card shortly after Thanksgiving. Enjoy!