I love Christmas cards. Especially the ones with old-fashioned, Victorian designs, and the ones with pithy quotes. I collect them like crazy. If I have the means and the price is just right, I’ll snatch up a box or two of those wonderful boxes of holiday well-wishes. I’m a Christmas card addict.
With all those cards, you probably think I send out bundles each year to family and friends, yes? Ah…no, not quite.
The boxes of cards sit throughout the year collecting dust. Then around Thanksgiving, I dig them out of whatever dingy hole they fell into during the past 11 months and revisit my treasures. And I think about all the people I want to send Christmas greetings to. I plan to have them all written and sent out by the 2nd week of December, so friends and loved ones will receive them before THE BIG DAY. And then life steps in. My best laid plans are put aside for a few weeks, in deference to holiday parties, children’s dramas, concerts, shopping, decorating and gift wrapping. Before I know it, December 21st rolls around and I’ve sent out no cards at all. Haven’t even written notes or addressed the envelopes.
I love receiving Christmas cards. I love sending Christmas cards. I love Christmas. But somehow the holiday rushes by way too fast and my good intentions are left in the dust. Part of the problem I think is that as a writer, I can’t just pen a quick note and send it on its way. No. I’m compelled to compose a missive that will fill the entire card, and perhaps the back also. I hate white space. If there’s too much of it, I’ll blissfully blather away about nothing and everything just to fill the empty spaces. I blame this in part on my journalism classes many years ago, where they repeatedly instructed us to “fill the white spaces.” I was brainwashed, utterly and completely.
I think for 2012, I’m going to purchase leftover Christmas cards after the 2011 holiday season and leave them on my desk. I’ll be sure to see them each time I sit at my computer and won’t forget where I’ve stored them. I’ll have holiday photo cards printed up of my son & I sometime around April. I’ll start working on the cards in August or September, and have them all addressed before Thanksgiving. That way, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, all that will need doing is purchasing lovely holiday stamps and sticking them on the envelopes. The first of December, in the mailbox they go. Yes, lovely.
Pen and Keys 
Ah yes Victorian designs in its many splendid ways is always nice to collect. Your plan is indeed grand and I’ll be more than impressed if you truly accomplish this goal. Here’s hoping for the best. Good luck.