12 YEARS ONLINE

KENT HOLSATHER With us since 2004.

Christmas Cards and More "OK, I've already told everybody I got promoted to vice president of the firm during the past year, so are they going to believe I also won 'Dancing with the Stars' and climbed Mt. Everest on my holiday?"

Don't you love those essays about families at Xmas?

By KENT HOLSATHER
of TheColumnists.com

 

 

My mother was a Christmas card aficionado. She would spend countless hours carefully signing, addressing, and mailing well over 50 cards every holiday season.

Her bookkeeping was meticulous with names and addresses updated annually from a list she kept that identified those friends who had reciprocated and those who failed to keep in touch. A three year grace period was enforced and if there was no response, the unlucky party was scratched from the “approved" list.

By the week of Christmas, our house was festooned with cards of every shape and color. I don’t remember if there was a competition among the ladies of the neighborhood to see who could garner the most cards but I would think that my mom would have been right there in the running for queen of the block.

Christmas card sending took a huge hit after my mother died and I never carried on the tradition, which was probably to my detriment. I do get cards from my insurance adjuster, financial advisor, and the guy who sold me a car last summer. Those cards say “Merry Christmas” and don’t affect me in any negative way that I know of. They give a warm greeting and leave it at that.

On the other hand, cards that contain the dreaded annual form letter of family doings can depress me to high heaven. They’ve been a holiday staple for the last 20 years and their sole purpose has been to make me feel like the underachiever I probably am. They are only personal when it comes to the signature at the end but I guess you have to hit the copy machine when you need to tell dozens of people the family details of the last 12 months.

When reading these little family essays, I can’t get Lake Wobegon out of my mind. That's Garrison Keiler's little imaginary town where the women are strong, the men good looking, and the children are all above average.

The people who send those family greeting messages probably don’t realize that they might be embellishing slightly, but that’s OK. I know my life isn’t perfect, but it isn’t all that bad either. If a little embellishment can be tolerated then I think I could cobble a little insert of my own for this year’s card and it would probably go something like this:

Greetings from sunny Bellingham. This truly has been an outstanding year for Kent and Jackie (I love talking in the third person). We have been hit by unexpected surprises and, of course, the realization of some of our highest expectations. Number one on the unexpected front was the huge windfall tax return we got in June that helped us pay cash for a new Corvette. I might add that we look pretty good driving around in our ticket-me-red rocket. Did I mention 430 ponies under the hood? Kent has ascended the corporate ladder at bp. You probably know that bp is the second largest oil producer in the world. Kent has an office (corner) with his name on the door. His accomplishments at work are too numerous to mention in this brief letter but we will try to fit them in for next year. Kent and Jackie’s daughter got married this summer to a fine young man who just happens to be a lawyer. How could she settle for anything less? The wedding was held at the finest resort in the state and our timing was impeccable, to say the least. The weather was perfect along with the flowers and food. There were several hundred people in attendance and all were dressed to the nines with enough diamonds to make Harry Winston jealous. We might as well slip in a little tidbit that Kent won the office pool again this year, must be living right, Ha Ha. The months have slipped by so fast that it’s hard to believe that the year is almost over. When you are busy with exciting and important things, time just flies by. We hope you find the time to write to us. With our packed schedule, it might difficult to read and answer your correspondence but we will certainly try to make the effort. Next year will be new and exciting with challenges waiting to be conquered. We can hardly wait. Merry Christmas, The Holsathers

©2011 by Kent Holsather. This column first posted Dec. 5, 2011.

 

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