As the Holidays approach, there’s a lot of fun planning and decoration that is going on. As we get closer to the date of celebration, whether it’s Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the New Year or whatever else that you might be celebrating, the stress often starts to mount somewhat. Not only thanks to the standard shopping that goes on or thanks to the travel to and/or from family get-togethers, though those are all contributers to vacation stress… A massive part of holiday stress revolves round the sending out of holiday greetings cards. While this is a superb convention that goes back possibly as far as any one can reasonable remember, I have an issue with the direction this tradition seems to have taken, and i hope my feelings are shared, or will be shared or at least thought about, by others. That issue has to do with the actual message being sent out to everyone’s ‘list of loved-ones’.
I get the distinct impression that for many people nowadays, sending out vacation cards is like infancy Valentine’s cards in reverse. As a kid it appeared that the more cards you were given, the more ‘popular’ or accepted you felt. As adults in today’s busy society, I am getting the feeing that many folks are attempting to copy those self same types of feelings by sending out vacation cards as it is accepted and recognized and a ‘caring and considerate thing to do’. With all due respect, I need to say that it depends a lot on the way in which these cards and/or communications are sent out.
The gloomy fact is that many people apparently think that simply loading up a database of names (and by database, do not think I’m getting all techie on you… I simply mean an electronic address book of names and addresses), and mail-merging them onto some envelopes that contain a card that announces something along the lines of ‘Season’s Greetings’ with their name scrawled on the bottom constitutes a ‘caring and thoughtful gesture’. I say ‘No Way’!
I don’t care if it’s got a photograph of you and your children on the front, if it is’s you and your dog and moggy or if it is’s an entire collage of chums, family, and places you’ve visited in the past year… If you do not care to take some time to draft some type of private note on the card so I know you were pondering ME when you put it together as opposed to simply going thru the motions of mailing one of hundreds of ‘warm wishes’ in a mass, robotic fashion… Save yourself the stamp and the envelope. Send it to someone that cares as much as you do.
If you are my mate or family, whether near or far, I need to keep in contact with some news… Not simply an,’Oh yeah, remember me. And are not my photograph cute?!’ type message. To me, if i’m not worth that sort of effort, that’s's OK… We all get busy and folk drift out of our lives. That’s's ordinary. But to pretend that it is something ongoing and special with a totally impersonal card with nothing get your name ‘autographed’ below the universal message printed on every card… No thanks.
If things are too hard at it during the vacations to keep in contact with me, or if i’m too busy to stay in touch with you, that’s's OK. I’ll send or receive the equivalent of a Merry Christmas Card in the middle of the year, and if it has some type of personal message from me to you or vice versa, it is worth 1,000,000 times more than the vacuous excuse for an individual card sent ‘when you’re intended to send it’. But hey, that’s's just me.
The bottom line is that while nothing is perfect and there might still be a few objections to today’s modern lighting alternatives, those objections are becoming smaller and smaller all the time. It’s encouraging to see the direction we’re headed with home and office lighting.
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