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<\/a><\/p>\nI did not send Season\u2019s Greetings cards to anyone on \u201cmy\u201d side of last year\u2019s card list as I\u2019ve had a severe case of PESD, Post-Election-Stress-Disorder. In lieu of a card with a ho-ho-ho-ho from Santa, here are some stickers to help you keep your spirits up as the trumpies prepare to take the reins and try to drive us back to the Dark Ages.<\/p>\n
I apologize to those of you who sent a card but didn\u2019t get one in return. If you\u2019re like me, you\u2019ve been confused over the decades about what to do about cards that weren\u2019t reciprocated. If you don\u2019t get a reciprocal card one year, do you send one out the next year anyway? The year after that? Is there a cutoff? What does Miss Manners say? It\u2019s a question I don\u2019t want to deal with any more.<\/p>\n
I first started sending cards after my 20th high school reunion (last summer was the 50th). Back then, I was surprised to discover that hardly anybody kept in touch, with me or with each other. I was determined not to lose track, as I have an embarrassing nostalgic streak, and annual Christmas cards seemed to be the socially accepted way to do it. By that time (mid-Eighties) just about everybody I knew from high school and college and my semi-hippie years was married except me, and most lived at a distance. I made a list of all known \u201cfriends\u201d and sent cards nearly every year, but most of the time it\u2019s the wife who is in charge of the cards, so whenever I got a card I always assumed it was the wife who put the card in the envelope and, more often than not, signed for both of them (guys just aren\u2019t on top of that sort of thing).<\/p>\n
The list grew, the list shrank. Sometimes an exchange went on for years, then\u2026nothing. Why? Who knew? In those pre-internet years people were moving around, having kids, getting divorced, promoted, fired etc. Some cards came intermittently, a card one year, then skip one, then cards for two, then skip\u2026. I\u2019ve never been hip on all the social proprieties, and for a single guy it was very confusing. It still is.<\/p>\n
Last spring I took a course at the local JC, Introduction to Social Media, to learn how to deal with FaceBook, Twitter and the rest, and it seems to me that the exchanging of Christmas cards is a kind of pre-internet form of social media. The annual card ritual lets you know that people are still alive and tells them that you are too, but what does it mean when the cards stop coming? Did you forget to send a card last year, and they think you\u2019ve dumped them? Have you been dumped? Ghosted? Unfriended? Shined-on? Did you piss off a spouse? Have they divorced? Remarried? Moved? Died?<\/p>\n
And if you do send a card, do you just sign your name, or do you write a note? After I finally got married, I typed an annual summary for a few years, but after the fire at my mom\u2019s house I hadn\u2019t been in the mood.<\/p>\n
Now, at the age of sixty-eight, it seems to me we\u2019re on the brink of\u2026what? Autocracy? Fascism? Post-truth Trumpian Nirvana? Given what I fear is coming and the time the actuarial tables say I have left, I\u2019m not in the mood. Do I send a card? Do I not send a card? Screw it.<\/p>\n
To those who did not send a card with whom I\u2019ve been in contact otherwise, and to those who have been incommunicado out of pique or laziness as well as for philosophical, marital or medical reasons, you are not being unfriended or dumped, only \u201cdelisted.\u201d I still like\/love\/respect\/admire\/despise you same as ever. I have a new website\/blog for anybody interested in keeping up: www.WilliamScottMorrison.com, and you can always email or call or even tweet, just like the Donald (though I\u2019m still avoiding Facebook as if it were an STD).<\/p>\n
For those of you who would prefer that I disappear into the sunset, after this I will no longer guilt-trip you with perfunctory holiday cards just to make you feel small and petty, as you deserve. No, not me.<\/p>\n
All the best,<\/p>\n
Scott<\/p>\n
PS–The Rose Bowl between Penn State and USC was one of the best football games I’ve ever seen even though we lost, 52-49, on a last second field goal. Can’t wait till next year.<\/p>\n
I was in such a bah\u2013humbug mode during last year’s holiday season that I didn’t send any cards to my list of “friends,” which got me to really think about the tradition of sending greeting cards every year at Christmas. I’ve always been a big fan of Santa, but I’m not into formal religion and<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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