From the Dec. 23, 1960 edition of the Vineyard Gazette by Colbert Smith:
Christmas, you probably don’t need to be told, is not conducive to that estimable process called consecutive thought. Something in the air at this time of the year preys upon the overloaded brain, and should any solid chunk of thinking bubble its way to the surface of that churning gray substance, it seems to be promptly disintegrated into splinters by sharp little questions and observations appearing in the brain out of the inexplicable nowhere.
Like: Did I remember to send a card to dear old Mrs. McGillicuddy?
Or: What could be in that package Aunt Minerva sent? Not, I hope, more of those antimacassars with the town seal of Chutney, Vt., she crochets.
Or: The Robertsons are giving a party. That means cherry-rum-pomegranate punch. And that means two aspirin before and a dose of bicarb after.
Like brilliant tree ornaments, these little thoughts hang on the brain and deflect the light from the central body of thought, and the brain refuses to obey the laws of either induction or deduction, but goes merrily along its unreasoning way, keeping time with nothing else save the erratic rhythms of Jingle Bells.
All of this is meant to be an excuse for the disconnected, semi-detached and no doubt illogical discourse that follows, which was written during the trying times of the Christmas season, and for that reason contains only misanthropic microbes of thought.
Somebody, some higher authority like the Spirit of Christmas Future or Amy Vanderbilt, ought to draw up a passel of laws that would standardize the sending and receiving of Christmas cards. The present situation, fraught as it is with human foibles, is intolerable, especially to the sensitive individual. It leads to too many instances of doubt concerning the motives of one’s friends and acquaintances.
Perhaps the most widespread of these is the reaction you have when you receive a card from someone just long enough after you sent him one to create a doubt as to whether you really were on his list or are being sent a card just because you sent him one.
And there is the reverse situation, when you are late mailing your cards and you have already received a large number. Will the recipients of your cards think you sent them only because you received cards from them?
If instances such as these recur often enough, a tremendous amount of mental strain can ensue. All the worry and wonder about it, you can tell yourself, gets you nowhere and besides that is probably unfounded, but the worry and wonder is still there nevertheless. Clearly something ought to be done.
One easement might be found in a new philosophy in the design of Christmas cards. Ninety-nine per cent of them these days are designed to illustrate a spontaneous burst of affection on the part of the sender for the sendee.
The good will becomes nebulous when the sendee knows that his is one of several hundred names on the sender’s list, and even more so if he has reason to suspect that he would not have received a card at all if he had not sent one himself.
Perhaps a new kind of Christmas card is the solution. Greeting card companies have devised cards for every other conceivable situation up to and including those for obscure relations and obscure diseases. You know: Congratulation to My Step-mother’s Great-Aunt on Her Gall Stone Removal.
So why shouldn’t there be a Thank You for Your Christmas Card card? The sending of such a card would be a polite way, not to mention an honest way, of acknowledging the receipt of a card from somebody not on your own list, and would also imply reassuringly that you were not sending regular Christmas cards this year.
Such a card could also be mailed at leisure, and there would be no more of the expedient of rushing cards to neglected people quickly enough for it to appear as if your own spontaneous bursts of affection actually cross theirs in the mail.
Better than the designing of a Christmas card to answer Christmas cards perhaps would be the declaration of a Christmas card mailing day. Designated for brevity’s sake CCMD, it could occur about two weeks before Christmas and would be effective all over the country. Such a declaration need not be passed by Congress. It would be more ironclad anyway if Mrs. Vanderbilt would make it known that only people of the inferior social orders mail cards on any day by CCMD.
Thus everybody would send out their cards at the same time, and they would have to stand as they committed themselves. Second-guessing would be removed in this manner from the Christmas card ritual, and the grand game of trying to outguess what other people were going to do would be refined intensely.
Perhaps an even better solution to the problem would be...would be to...perhaps...
Here’s a card for dear old Mrs. McGillicuddy! Wonder if it’s too late to send her one?
Compiled by Hilary Wallcox
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