Wow!
I can’t believe we’re already at December 7. WTF? I’m sort of ahead of the game, in a sense. I sent out my parents’ Christmas cards yesterday. We had our family portrait done a few weeks ago, and I had cards made. My mother instructed me to order no more than 50. I listened to her, although I don’t know why. I don’t usually listen to her. But this year, for some reason . . . Anyway, my father faxed me his Christmas card list, and of course he forgot a whole bunch of people. By the time I added the missing family members (we have a HUGE extended family), I realized that I don’t have enough cards to go around.
This will be a problem in my family. Not so much on his side, but also on my mother’s side, which tends to bicker more. They’re big into equality, so if you send something to one aunt, you must ALWAYS send the same thing to the other, otherwise there will be some sort of auntie hell to pay. The aunts are non-confrontational, so they won’t come out and tell you that they’re mad, but you’ll hear about it from the multitudes of first and second cousins.
My mother tends to favor my oldest aunt, who practically raised her after the death of her mother. She calls her every day and sends little gifts. The trouble starts when she starts sending things on my behalf, which I violently discourage.
When my book was released, my mother insisted on sending a copy to Aunt W. I had a problem with this for a few reasons:
1. I didn’t want to set the precedence that I would send copies of that book to the entire family. As an author, I pay for each copy of my book, and I could grow broke by gifting my entire inventory.
2. I didn’t necessarily want Aunt W. (or my mother, or my father, or any other member of my family) reading my book. It’s far too much information for them.
So what happened? She did it anyway, and I’ve since been crucified for not sending everyone a copy. Do you think they would offer to buy copies to support me? NO. They wanted free ones. I was recently chastised by one of my able-bodied cousins for not sending him a comp copy. It was everything I could do to keep myself from saying “Listen, ya cheap bastard . . . that book’s been out for FOUR YEARS. If you really wanted to read it, you could have gone on to Amazon.com and spent the $14. I doubt it would have killed you.”
You guys would be proud. I kept my mouth shut and laughed it off. I told him the truth — which is that I don’t even have a copy of my own book, and that if I decided to order more, I would send him a copy. The thing is that I don’t plan to order more.
All this to say that I can’t wait to see the fallout from the Christmas card deficiency. It’s not going to be fun.
On a completely different note, one of my friends was having an “issue” this morning, and here’s the holiday advice I gave, which will probably apply to a lot of people:
Here’s how I think of the Christmas season: the holidays are supposed to be about family and loved ones, which is great for those select few who feel that they have “perfect” relationships. For the rest of us, it’s a season that rubs our noses in our flaws and our expectations of ourselves. If you have a relationship that’s suffering in even the slightest way, it’s magnified exponentially during the holidays. If you’re having financial issues, they’re even more pronounced when it comes time to buy presents. The good news is that, come January 1, things look brighter, and you have nearly 10 months before the nonsense gets started all over again.
