…I mailed out my Christmas cards.  If you’re one of my three faithful readers, you should be receiving yours soon.  And forgive me for not including a family letter with the card; it’s just that it’s hard to write about life in Kennewick and not sound like I’m bragging.  And you know me–I’m such a cautious writer, I’d die before I made a fool of myself in print like that.

Sending and receiving Christmas cards has long been one of my favorite holiday traditions.  Don’t you just love opening up Christmas cards from friends you haven’t seen in ages?  I think it’s because I’m a closet sentimentalist, and Christmas cards seem like the last true holiday tradition that hasn’t been modernized or shortcut in any way.  We send them paper, stamp and snail mail just like our parents and grandparents did.  They are the epitome of old-fashioned, Norman Rockwell-style Season’s Greetings.  I just love that.

However.  This morning, as I sat at my kitchen table sealing and stamping seventy-five cards, I couldn’t help but mentally tally up the cost.  And as I did so, I asked myself something for the first time ever:  how bad would it really be to send an e-card for Christmas next year?  Oh, to even think such a blasphemous thought!  And yet I did.  Not only did I think it, I am now letting the evil thought flow freely from my brain to my keyboard, soon to reach the judgment of all of you.  Yikes.

The more respectable side of me would never have considered an e-card, but this morning I began to examine the possibility for several reasons:

1.  It would be easy.

2.  It would be free.

3.  I could send cards out to twice as many people, thus convincing myself that I had twice as many friends.  The longer my addressee list is, the more popular I become in my head.

After mentally reviewing the above list, I’d almost decided that an e-card would be the right course for me next year.  After all, I surmised, Christmas e-cards will soon be the norm.  Why fight the future?  I bet Steve Jobs sent e-cards.

I was just starting to warm up to the idea when I stumbled across this:

Owie.  So much for riding the wave of the future.  My need to be seen as thoughtful overrides my need to be seen as techno-savvy.  (Both are trumped by my need to be seen as pretty, btw.)

Thus, after all my ruminating, you can bet you’ll be getting brick-and-mortar cards from me next year, my beloved besties.  And I had better be getting one from you.  (And not three days after you got mine–we all know that’s an obligatory reciprocation.)

(Actually, now that I think about it, go ahead; I don’t really care if it’s a sincere gesture, as long as it fills up some more space on my wall so I look extrasuperpopular when all those friends Stop By after reading my blog three posts ago.)

And so, without further ado, let the great Christmas Card Swap begin.  I, personally, cannot wait to dig in.  A card from a friend is the next best thing to a visit from a friend, so I’ll take it.  And a card from a faithful?  Well, that’s almost as good as a blog comment from a faithful.

Almost.