Amy Lu's View

I LOVE Christmas cards (or whatever winter holiday cards are appropriate).

I love getting them and I love sending them out.

I’m also really bad at sending them out–I’m super disorganized and can never keep track of people’s addresses from year to year. I also struggle with remembering who I’ve actually sent them to this year.

Oh yes, I have a spreadsheet. But I’m still a disorganized hot mess. But a Merry hot mess, so it’s all good.

You may be asking, “Aren’t you a LIBRARIAN? Shouldn’t you be ORGANIZED?”

No, that is yet one more well-meaning but slighlty infuriating (at least to me) stereotypes about librarians. (The top infuriating-to-Amy stereotpye is that we are “smart” and automatically know things). As a librarian, I know (theoretically) how to retrieve information, not how to organize it (that’s a very specific and highly skilled subset of librarianship known as cataloging).

AND, I ran out of stamps. I thought I had ordered more, but apparently didn’t push the right button to complete the purchase.

“Greeting cards have all been sent, The Christmas rush is through

But I still have one wish to make, A special one for you…”

–“Merry Christmas Darling,” The Carpenters

Of course it’s not just mailing the cards…creating the cards is quite an undertaking. And by “creating” I mean ordering them through Shutterfly and deciding which photos to use to capture the year. Sure, I could easily fill a card with photos of me, but I do aspire to use photos of both Chad and I, and finding such photos that are at least moderately flattering of both of us is no easy task. Finding photos for 2020 was really challenging as most photos of us were screenshots.

I’m always nervous that I’ve selected the wrong photos or included a typo until the cards actually show up. Luckily, it hasn’t happened yet….

And To Christmas Letter or Not To Christmas Letter? I think Christmas Letters are the bee’s knees and always enjoy reading others, but mine seem pretentious and annoying. Oh, that doesn’t stop me from sending them in the end, but I do wrestle with the wisdom of it.

Despite how much I lack in the art of Christmas card management and execution, I totally dig everything about them. I love having a holiday project and mission, and the tradition and ritual.

I love the sense of connection Christmas cards give me to people throughout my life. I love how I maintain relationships with some people only through Christmas cards–not that I wouldn’t like to communicate with them more, but in awe that we’ve kept up sending cards to each for so long (in some cases 20 some years).

This year, I even participated in a card exchange with other fans of our beloved podcast “TBTL.” Yes, that is hardcore fandom AND Christmas card mania.

And…YES, this post brings us to the official conclusion of the “Twelve Blog Posts of Christmas Challenge.” It took some unexpected topic twists and turns and gave me an excuse to indulge in extra sentimentality.

Now that I can spend less time blogging I can devote more time to getting my Christmas cards out before Valentine’s Day.