Every Christmas, when I go home, I’m greeted by an archway in the living room covered by cards. My Mom tapes every Christmas card she receives onto that archway, displaying them for inhabitants and visitors. This always seemed like an odd practice to me, but now, I do the same thing. I stick Christmas cards to the wall of my room with one piece of tape so that they flap open like fat, square birds.

 

After Christmas (significantly after: February after) my Mom takes down the cards, places them in a shoebox where she writes CHRISTMAS CARDS and the year. This archiving of Christmas cards complicates Cox’s notion of the letter as a “deliberate act”, it more resembles her description of email in that Christmas card senders often try “to churn through as many messages as possible” (Cox, 42). Specialized Christmas cards are sent out to tens and sometimes hundreds of people and their fronts usually depict a pretty snowflake, a jolly and engorged santa claus urging on his reindeer, or (my favorite) the family photo. (Of course, this is not solely a Christmas practice, but I chose Christmas to reflect on my own experience).

The inside usually contains some general printed holiday wishes (The Smiths wish you happy holidays and a wonderful new year!) or, if you’re lucky, handwritten holiday wishes complete with an autograph from every family member.

 

What’s odd, though, is that christmas cards aren’t all that personal or unique, they’re mass produced and sent to everyone that the family knows, works with, or has sat in a waiting room with.

 

So why do I and my Mom keep them? Why is their receipt so sentimental when their production is so obviously not sentimental?

 

Perhaps these christmas cards act as “personal memorabilia”. Cox suggests that we keep certain memorabilia with us “because they provide some identity for us, especially as we relate to others” (Cox, 148). A card represents a relationship to another. Thus, an archive of christmas cards represents a social network that is formed every year. The people within your network depends on who you’re related to, who considers you a friend, who considers you a good co-worker, your religion and, most importantly, whoever has the time, energy, and desire to create and send out cards to their network.

 

A family photo on the front of the card creates a vivid picture of this social network. It also manufactures an image of blissful joy. The family stands, smiling, arms around each other, looking into the camera—but the photo could have been taken after an hour of children screaming, running, and pulling the photographer’s pants down,  smiling at the camera only after ice cream and sacks of candy are promised.

Or this…

Pictures, of course, don’t tell the whole story; they allow us to create a narrative. When discussing a preference for video recording over recording speech, Thompson states that “people want their memories to be cued, not fully replaced; we reserve the existential pleasures of gently rewriting our history” (Thompson, 42).

 

If that’s true, then these idyllic pictures of Christmas warmth can create a happy memory for every Christmas. I suppose that’s better than remembering the stress of shopping, seeing family, and shoveling snow. But when does this philosophy lead to denial? Lifelogging, one of Thompson’s subjects, erases the possibility of denial, but is exact memory what we want? How do we balance the desire to shape our histories with being historically accurate? Is this an ethical question or a practical one? Should our desire be a factor? To what extent does desire shape all histories?