The Three Cs. I fight two of them (Cards and Calendars) every year.
- I don’t have time.
- No one cares anyway.
- They’ll be late.
- It’s expensive.
- It’s wasteful.
But, every year, I succumb.
Or is it succumbing? Maybe it’s stepping up, not in a glorious, center-stage way, but stepping up in “Can I make a small difference?” way.
What difference do I make?
Isn’t that the classic It’s a Wonderful Life holiday question?
I’m no George Bailey, but every year, I contemplate killing the Cards and the Calendars. What difference do they make anyway?
This year, I squashed the kill-the-cards/calendars ideations early, because the existential reason wormed its way into the light: Connection.
Connection is the third (or maybe the first and ruling?) C of My Three Cs: Cards, Calendars, and Connection.
I know I experience that lift in my heart when I open a card or receive a calendar from a friend. If a mere one tenth of the recipients of our goofy cards and my tormented calendars experience that momentary rush of dopamine when they open theirs, it’s worth the time, the trouble, the expense… even the waste.
Because the truth is, I’ll waste a lot more than a ream of cardstock to remind the people in my life that we are connected.
©Pennie Nichols. All Rights Reserved. 2023
We still send a few Christmas cards but each year the number gets less and less. Not so much people no longer here, but I think it’s maybe a case of “I only send cards out to people who send cards to me first”. We all want connection, though, and there are several people now we only connect with through the annual holiday cards.
Steven will ask me, “Do they send you a card?” I typically respond, “It doesn’t matter to me.”