My Christmas cards peaked two years ago with a creation that was so flipping cute, I'm still proud of it. (Yes, it's above, and shamelessly also on an article about how pointless they seemed in the age of Facebook.) It was downhill after that. Last year the message said: Wishing you warmest holiday wishes from our new home. Yes, we were wishing that hard.
This year, I don't feel like doing them. I just don't want to. But I don't want to be totally lame, either. I considered Paperless Post, which seems like the most elegant of a decidedly inelegant thing. Then I decided I'd take a cute picture of our kids, and send personal emails to everyone on my list. Surely that would be the next best thing to a real card.
But this evening I had an even better idea: I would send them all a song on iTunes, either Low's Little Drummer Boy or, if they could handle it, Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24). (Then I concocted a full-on holiday card product for iTunes, where the gift email could include an uploaded photo alongside the personal message, as well as an option to 'Click here if you already own this song to receive something else.')
"You know not everyone uses iTunes, right?" asked my husband. Ah, like most of my parents' friends. And while I might have iTunes accounts in the US, Canada and UK, I definitely don't have them in Germany, Australia, Norway and Malaysia. Then there's my distant relatives doesn't even email, and my highly proper relative who would frown upon an email-in-lieu. I'm not deterred: I have 12 various holiday cards I can send to that lot, old-school-like.
Suddenly, I'm energised. Apparently, the tedium of writing and addressing 200 was just too...tedious. But this, now this could be fun: 175 iTunes songs, 25 emails, and 12 regular cards.
I think I've just started a new tradition.
Sarah Western Balzer
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Sarah Western Balzer is the editor of HITC Life. She grew up in Tampa, Florida, and lived in Washington, DC and New York before moving to London, where she lived for seven years. She now lives in Toronto with her husband and two sons. Her background is in the music industry, lifestyle relocation, and journalism. If you'd like to contribute to HITC Life, and work in banking or a field related to finance, please drop her a line (sarah.balzer@hereisthecity.com).
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