Trees for Everyone!

I've upgraded from buying Christmas cards to making my own (partially for creativity's sake, but mostly because a box of 10 Christmas cards can cost $25 whereas a bag of glitter costs $1).

My original plan was to decorate each card with a different and unexpected holiday symbol. There would be the Christmas Rat, since Jesus came to earth for all creatures, not just humans; there would be the Christmas Unicorn, in remembrance of that fallen species that perished in the Great Floods; there would be the Christmas Little Red Riding Hood and Wolf, to show that even these feuding characters can lay aside their differences to open presents together in celebration of Jesus' birth; there would be the Christmas Mermaid, because mermaids have just as much to do with Christmas as elves or men in bright red furry suits do (or unicorns or rats or little red riding hood, for that matter)--also, mermaids are pretty. And there would be angels to give out to the people who are likely to be offended and/or perplexed by Christmas Mermaids and Christmas Unicorns.

I did make all of those cards, too. But then, just for fun, I made a Christmas Tree card, too. I discovered how fun it is to draw Christmas Trees. As long as it's narrow at the top, wide at the base, and has a gold star at its pinnacle, it can generally be confirmed to be a Christmas tree. Fun and simple, and pretty, and colourful! I got really excited about the Christmas trees. So excited that I had to call my roommate into our glitter-infested living room to show them to her. I made green trees with blue lights and magenta trees with gold lights and purple trees with green lights and blue trees with silver lights. It was a multicoloured treestravaganza!

This brings me to my Christmas Symbol Theory. I have often heard laments from certain members of my church that the most popular holiday symbols--such as trees, presents, stockings, etc--don't have all that much to do with the 'true meaning of Christmas'. In fact, they have more to do with presents--things to put presents under, wrap presents in, and stuff presents into. Very consumer-based. Maybe so. But they're also just so darned simple to draw. It's far more likely that your average human being can produce a glittery card of a stocking hung by the chimney with care than a recognizeable depiction of the Three Wise Men on their camels. Unless you're willing to put it in an excessive amount of effort per card, you'll end up with cards that look like they were drawn by a cross-eyed first-grader.* So maybe it's not that Christmas has become a consumer-driven holiday so much as we're lazy and lacking in artistic skills.


*Alright, maybe I'm grossly underestimating everyone else's artistic talents. But I can speak for myself.

Christmas Cards Frenzy!!

For the first 21 years of my life, I didn't really get cards. Don't get me wrong, I received them. I received a lot of them. But I didn't understand the point of them. Or at least, I didn't understand why some people couldn't conceive of an occasion when they would give someone a gift without including a card. Cards are something you read, take the money out of, and then throw away--or, if they're pretty, you put them on your dresser and then they eventually fall behind it and you find them three years later and THEN you throw them away*. Alright, so maybe I put them in a box somewhere and look at them every once in a while and they make me happy. Point is, I was not a card-giver until recently. I blame The Paper Umbrella (if ever you're in Regina, you should go). There were some pretty amazing cards there. There was a card there for when you want to invite your secret lover for a weekend getaway to a charming village somewhere. It was great. I began to see the merit of cards. Cards are actually kind of awesome.

This is how I ended up in Desart, being seduced by anything with gold sparkles on it. I ended up purchasing a box of the most bizarre Christmas cards I had ever seen. You know, the sort of cards that have 8-foot-tall winged reindeer on them, in an unironic, totally in earnest, very whimsical sort of way. Their designer had clearly been on an acid trip when he/she was creating these cards. I took them home and began excitedly filling them out. Then I realized that I still don't understand how to do cards. For Christmas cards, a normal person would probably write something like this: "Merry Christmas! Wish you were here! I'll be spending Christmas getting drunk while wearing a funny hat! Love, Alex." See? Something to do with the holidays. But when I fill out a card, I can't seem to write about anything except the card. So my cards look more like this: "Hi Alex! You may be wondering why I sent you this weird Christmas card. Don't worry, I'm being ironic! I couldn't resist purchasing something so warped! The person who made it was clearly on drugs! Love, Amy."** What a lovely Christmas card.

After I filled out each card with a variation of the above drug-trip message, I suddenly got really paranoid that the recipients were going to compare cards. What if they all realized that I wrote the same un-christmassy thing inside of each of their cards? The card would lose what few shreds of meaning it had. I was mass-producing my endearing quirkiness! (This dilemma remains unresolved. But anyway.)

I've been bit by the card-giving bug, now. I plan on getting more (and less drug-induced, Christmas-hallucination-themed) cards this very evening. Maybe I'll get generic ones this time, though, to save myself some writing. They will say things like "Look! There's a snowflake on this card!" or "Ironically, this card is made of a tree and ALSO has a tree on it!" or "SPARKLES!!!". Maybe if I write enough of them I'll eventually get the hang of writing "Merry Christmas! All the best! Love Amy" instead.

*unless of course it's an awesome card that contains, say, a comic strip explaining why I don't have a backbone, in which case I cherish it always. Or if it has a heartfelt message written inside. Or if the card is complementing me on that time I looked fabulous while getting the mail, and has rhinestones on it.

**I do this with postcards, too. If I send you a card with a picture of a sheep on the front of it, it's far more likely that my card will be telling you about the sheep in the picture than that it will be telling you about my adventures in Ireland.