Xmas Email Box Stuffers – In Case You Forgot to Hit Send Already

The holidays are a busy time for everyone.  Trees and relatives and wine and food and presents and Irish coffees and getting fat and rushing to and fro and all of that can cause a person to forget things.

Like Christmas cards.

Actually, it seems that much of society has already forgotten cards entirely, me, admittedly, included.  The number sent has gone from about 60 a few years ago to, well, none more recently.

Well, kinda – I did find a box of Kwanzaa cards on sale a couple of years and sent those but their reception was, shall we say, muted.

What most folks have been doing lately is sending emails.  Pictures of cats in sweaters and dogs with antlers and kids being forced to smile accompanied by a sweet message and a little “hey, this is what we did this year…” content.

But even organizing this can be time consuming and – considering what tends to happen when one puts a sweater on a cat – physically dangerous.

So, in case you happened to forget or not get around to it or have been in too much of a Nog Fog or have just been walking by your computer, scowling with guilt, have no fear!  The Globe feels your pain and will ease your suffering.

Here a few ready for cut/pasting seasonal emails that will make your loved ones far away think you still care about them…at least enough to push eight buttons.

They’re even pre-italicized for your pleasure, so shall we begin?

May the joy of the season find you and yours in the best of spirits.

As we reflect on the past year, we see the wonder of life in all of its soaring majesty.

And even in moments of strife, we can find peace in the knowledge that we are all here for a purpose and that our Creator is with us at all times.

Blessings this Christmas and have a greatest of new year’s.

PS – I haven’t forgotten that $340 bucks you owe me.

A little too on-the-nose?  How about:

While we do not share the same faith, please do know that you are in our prayers.

And our prayers work, so…

If you need to be more specific, you can try this one:

Put on your ugliest sweater and join us for our annual Boxing Day funfest!

We’ll provide the cookies and the cake and the music – you provide the “Christmas Cheer.”

We’ll start at 4 and go until 8 so be here with bells on!

PS – It’s BYOB and has a strict ending time this year because, well, you all know why.  That reminds me: NO CELL PHONES and everyone has to sign the waiver.  This time we’ll check.  You know why.

While it is best to be apolitical during this time of year, we didn’t forget our progressive friends.  Here’s one you can send to share the joy and the blame:

As we face a new year of fires, floods, famines, and food shortages, it is important at this most reflective time of year to take a personal accounting of our own responsibility for the global climate threat.

Though it requires a true effort at this time of year, we all must learn to do with less to help save the Mother Planet we all inhabit, no matter how temporarily.

When we have less, we have more.  When we are fewer, we are greater.  When we are meeker – to quote the person whose birth is currently being fetishized – we are stronger.

That birth celebrated during this solstice season pointed the people of the world in a direction that Gaia cannot sustain:  Western Chrisitan culture is at the heart of our problem right now as has been since that fateful day.

Please remember that as you feast, you create famine, a famine your “messiah” – born in PALESTINE, by the way; yeah, colonialism goes that far back-  cannot cure with a few fish, with Jewish sushi, with Jewshi.

Honor the season by honoring the earth that made you.

#GazaStrong

A bit too much?

How about an email guaranteed not to offend.  Confuse and irritate?  Sure, that’s possible, but if you think about it what’s more confusing and irritating than dealing with the holidays?

Sending seasonal emails is so dismissive, almost as hopelessly idle as recycling content for your Substack page.

Sure it’s easy to just put “Merry Christmas” in the header and be done with it but it’s just lazy.

And sometimes it can be just plain rude, especially when you’re telling your friends and family that you’re “doing emails” and not sending gifts or cards this year but instead you are using all of that money to make a donation to some charity.

First, no one believes you really did that and when they are at your house for New Year’s your friends will – under their breath – point out to one another the existence of the surprisingly expensive and unnecessary new food processor you just got.  

Second, kids would prefer to get socks – yes, socks – than to be told their gift money went to stop nuclear war.

That being said, it can be rather amusing to inform that Hamas-supporting acquaintance of yours that you have had a tree planted in his honor on a kibbutz (it moves from rather amusing to really funny if you actually do it).  But that’s more of a Hanukah gift.

And then the emails always end up being cloyingly sweet and/or the writer tries to make them “wacky” with a throw away closing line like “Santa has left the building!”  It may have sounded funny in their head, but its only relevance lay in its confusion.

Or even worse, the emails are a crushingly tedious recitation of what an AMAZING year they and their family had, sprinkled with such astonishingly world-changing nuggets like how their problematic, Hazelden-frequenting teenager Billy “just got his license back!” and how “Janey got a double smiley face in finger-painting class for her Christmas elephant! Sure it has two trunks but it’s soooo adorable it went right on the fridge!”  

Good for her – Mozart was composing symphonies by that age.

Worst of all is when people try to “go all meta” on the season by sending out a seemingly endless rant that can only be deemed clever if you dismiss its hypocrisy about how Christmas emails are so dismissive.

But I digress.

Merry Christmas Everyone!