Are Holiday Cards Wicked Smart?

I am working diligently on my holiday cards – hoping to get them out before the New Year hits (unlike last year). As more and more arrive in my mailbox, I always wonder – where are all of these people all year?

In the day and age of Twitter, Facebook, Eons, MySpace, Flickr and an abundance of other social networking communications, why do I still receive a random, once-a-year update from relatives that I don’t really know and friends I haven’t seen since high school? Not that I don’t appreciate the cards and love hearing about people’s lives, but … it makes me wonder, what is the point of holiday cards? If you really cared about me, couldn’t you connect with me all year long electronically? Is an email or Twitter “follow” considered more impersonal than a once-a-year card?

The ones that really crack me up are the narcissistic, one-sided holiday letters that arrive with some of the cards. Usually these are of two categories:

1) Completely one-sided, only the “great things” that happened all year like new kids/jobs/houses/cars, etc.

2) TMI – too much information about the less-than-pleasant happenings in life such as gall bladder surgery or Aunt Edna’s bankruptcy.

It seems strange to me in this day and age that – unless you’re 70 or older – people don’t make more of a commitment to stay in touch on a regular basis with family and “friends.” It makes me think that holiday cards from cousins who don’t really know me are one sided ways to show off. If you really wanted to keep in touch or even get to know me a bit better, you could easily do so by connecting with me over email or – even easier – on the aforementioned social networks. It makes me think that the not-so-personal “friends” I have on Facebook (i.e., those who “friend” me even though we’ve never met) might just know me better than the cousins with whom I used to share matching PJs as we grew up together.

Perhaps holiday cards should just be reserved for business – it’s a cordial, intelligent gesture to say “Happy New Year” and “Thanks” to those with whom we conduct not-too-personal parts of our life. But to do so to friends and family – and only that – seems a bit cold and shallow.

What do you think?

Wicked Smart Sick Woman

 

I recently read an excerpt from Amy Silverstein’s Sick Girl, a new book about the harsher realities of post-transplant life.

 

 

Just when you think you are having a bad day, a book like this comes along and smacks you right back into reality. Ms. Silverstein’s harrowing account of her experiences as a heart transplant patient – at the still-innocent age of 25 – is good reminder to count your blessings. She describes painful after painful procedure and what it feels like to walk around with someone else’s heart in your chest – most notably how the brain works with the never-to-be-connected again nerve endings. She brilliantly – and painfully – outlines her body’s reaction to “the war of chemicals” she must take like clockwork no matter what she’s doing – even the celebration of her wedding must be paused for consumption.

Ms. Silverstein talks about what it’s like to forever walk around with the label of “sick girl” and how her entire life is shaped around this experience. But perhaps most surprising – to those of us who would imagine being a transplant recipient is a good thing – is how she describes a life full of “sick-girl kind of exhaustion.” The kind of exhaustion that makes you want to take your own life:

“There is no point at which, statistically speaking, a heart-transplant patient is on safer ground, because from the moment a donor heart begins to beat in a foreign chest, the immune system begins to destroy it.”

I can’t imagine living life that way. But Amy, keep living it. Stay strong – we’re glad “you’ll try” and that you’re here to share your experiences.

For more, read more reviews, the excerpt from US News & World Report or buy the book.