It Doesn't Have to be Perfect

A Christmas lesson I should have learned a very long time ago...

For as long as I can remember, my favorite thing about Christmas has been sending holiday cards.

When I was a little kid, my parents would gather us all together, get us dressed up in the best clothes we had (usually ones that my mother had made by hand), find the perfect location, set up the camera and tripod, and take our family photo. Once the photos were developed, we’d all gather together and look through them until we picked the perfect one. Then we’d get in the old minivan, go to Walmart or Costco, and pick out one of their holiday photo card designs.

When the cards were ready, I would sit next to my mom at the dinner table and we would work late into the night, listening to either The Carpenters Christmas album (which is, to this day, my favorite Christmas album) or an old Anne Murray Christmas cassette on repeat (she sings the best version of “O Holy Night”). We would write out notes on the backs of the cards, thanking our friends and family and acquaintances and people we hadn’t seen in years and people I’d never even met in my entire life, thanking them for being part of our lives and wishing them a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I was often in charge of stamping and addressing the envelopes — I loved writing our address in the top left corner, then flipping through my mom’s old address book to find the right address. (The other thing I was in charge of was updating the address book — by hand — whenever we received a card from someone and they had a new return address.) We’d take the cards to the post office, and then we’d wait. We’d wait for everyone to send cards back, and then we’d read them and cherish them and I’d carefully soak the envelopes so that I could keep the stamps for my little stamp collection.

We never had much money. We were very, very poor — so poor that one Christmas my father told me that we might not get any Christmas presents (that year was the year of the only Christmas miracle I have ever seen with my own two eyes — I’ll have to write about it someday, but I promise you, it was a miracle of the kind that only happens in fairy tales and Christmas movies, but it was real). But, even so, my parents always saved up money for our Christmas cards. Our family never missed a year — not until my father got very sick, was diagnosed with cancer, and passed away. I don’t know if my mother ever sent out Christmas cards after that, but I did. Christmas cards had become such a core part of the Christmas experience to me that I couldn’t imagine a Christmas without them. So I started sending a few dozen, and then fifty, and then a hundred, and then two hundred.

At first, I only sent Christmas cards, and then, over the years, I sent Hanukkah cards, Christmas cards, holiday cards, and even New Year cards, depending on the recipient. Friends, family, acquaintances, teachers — I gave a card to everyone who meant something to me. I wrote out each card and each note and each address by hand. Some years, I’d be super emotional, writing long letters inside the cards thanking my friends and family for being part of my life; other years, I’d write a simple message, but always with love and thankfulness and joy in my heart. Every card means, and has always meant, one important thing, and has always carried one unwritten message: I am so thankful that you exist and are in my life, and I wish you all of the joy and the happiness in the entire world.

I swore I’d never miss a year. And I never did. Until 2020.

Last Christmas, I was pregnant with my son, there was no Covid vaccine, I had a high-risk pregnancy, I was wary of having a photographer take our family photo during the peak Covid holiday terror, and I couldn’t figure out how to get everything together in time for photos. To top it off, I’d quit my job a few months earlier, and my usual holiday card budget was nonexistent. I tried to find a way to do photo cards, and failed. It really broke my heart, because, to me, sending holiday cards is just as important as giving gifts for the holidays (if I’m being honest with myself, it is more important to me because of what it symbolizes — the care, the love, the writing, the connection to others (no matter how big or small)).

I was determined not to miss another year, and was so certain that this year — 2021 — would be different. And it wasn’t. If anything, it was even more difficult: My son wasn’t sleeping through the night; I have been struggling with physical/health issues and have been in pretty much constant pain; I couldn’t find a way to photograph our whole family and get us all dressed up (not to mention I had no holiday clothes to wear); and there were just so many unavoidable reasons why I couldn’t get my life together in time for photo cards this year. I resigned myself to another year without cards.

But then I realized that it didn’t matter. I realized I didn’t need to make perfect holiday cards and take a perfect family photo and do anything fancy. I realized I could just buy beautiful cards that made my heart sing, and send those to everyone instead. I realized that it didn’t need to be perfect. It never needs to be perfect. It just needs to be. And so I picked out some beautiful cards that made me feel joyful, pulled up my address book, and started writing, addressing, and stamping.

I think that this lesson applies to a lot of things in life, including goals, jobs, projects, writing, etc. If we don’t do things just because we can’t do them perfectly, then we end up missing out. And sometimes — actually, I’d argue, most of the time — just being, just doing, is good enough. That book that you’ve always wanted to write, but never wrote because you’re too worried you’re not a good enough writer, because you’re worried that it won’t be perfect? Well, it is better to write something that is merely okay than to not write it at all. The same goes for holiday cards.

Happy holidays to you all!

Please stay safe, and get boosted.

Love,

Susan