The Sunday Memory Drawer - Christmas Cards

Tis the season to lick some stamps...fa la la la la la la la la.

Guess what?  They've even taken that fun away from us.  Postage is now self-adhesive.  No need to keep wetting your whistle so you can slobber up the back of a stamp for Aunt Helen.

I don't ever remember not sending out Christmas cards.  And, yes, folks, I do call them Christmas cards.  I was probably in the fifth or sixth grade when I started doing this process all by myself.  I was a semi-adult and this was a rite of passage.

"Hey, Mom, no need to sign your cards....'and Lenny.'  I've got it handled now."

I figured I was saving her a lot of work.  The gratitude was less than I expected.

"Do what you want."

As far as my mother was concerned, I could knock myself silly spending my own allowance to send out Christmas cards.  As long as I remembered that any cards to people who were not Christians must say nothing more than "Season's Greetings."  The way this was emphasized to me over and over, I decided it was a federal crime.  Nevertheless, it was the sword of Damocles that hung over me every single holiday season.

Hmmm.  My friend from gym class.  Is she Christian or Jewish? 

If I wasn't totally sure, it would bother me all day.  I longed for a directory of friends where religion was specified next to date of birth and favorite brand of candy.

Of course, I was even more bizarre in how I actually filled out my cards.  I would divide my friends into three tiers.  Some I barely tolerated.  Others who were closer.  And the last group was reserved for my very special chums.  And I wrote out my cards in that very specific order.  If your card was addressed within the first ten minutes of my process, you were definitely not high on my list.  Oh, yeah, hi, here's your card.

When kids started to write longer notes in their cards, I then obsessed over that.  You didn't want to simply sign your name if somebody sent you a greeting that was two chapters worth of "Crime and Punishment."  And you also didn't want to be the one getting longwinded when all you got back was "Happy Holidays, Russell."  It was always quite the annual dilemma.

Of course, my own cards were not the only ones I was entrusted with.  My yearly chore also included my role as the personal Christmas secretary for Grandma downstairs.

My grandmother couldn't read or write, so she definitely needed my help. She would pull out this address book which she probably bought with ration stamps in 1943. And, then, we would go over every single address as she would then relate some anecedotal story about the person. One name sounded even more German than the next.

"Reinfleinschmidtschultz........"  The names went on and on.  As did the stories.

"Her uncle was a Communist."

"They used to live in the Bronx but they moved because they wanted to be big shots."

"She married a Catholic."

This was my own personal version of "A Charlie Brown Christmas." The script never changed. The interesting thing is that most of the folks in my grandmother's address book were unknown quantities to me. They were all people she knew from years ago. Some of them came over to America on the boat with her. They lived in such faraway places as Michigan and Maryland and Staten Island. I doubt my grandmother had seen any of them in 20 or 30 years. But, they got a Christmas card from her every year. And they sent back.  I know because I'm the one who also had to read the incoming messages to Grandma.

Of course, this annual ritual also had the same beginning every year as well. It would start with this short exchange.

Grandma: "I don't think I'm going to send any cards this year. It's too much trouble."

Me: "If you don't send a card, all these people are going to think you're dead."

A short pause.

Grandma: "Okay, let's send."

We repeated that same scene year after year.

The Christmas after my grandmother died, I still sent all those people a card. With a short note telling them how much they had enriched my grandmother's life.

And that was the last time we heard back from any of them.

I send my own cards to this day.  I still sort them into groups of three.  You still don't want to be in that first grouping.

And, amazingly, some of the recipients are folks I haven't seen in a decade or two.  Should I cut down the work and save on postage?

Nah.

They'll think I died.

Dinner last night:  Pastrami sandwich at Greenblatt's.