Long ago, back when we were at the financial level where it was WELL worth it to return a 99-cent bottle of shampoo if I didn’t like it, I found a whole bunch of Christmas cards on clearance at a bookstore for $1/box. They weren’t what I would have chosen (one was a scene with pagodas, another was an Andy Warhol red shoe, a third was a very plain light blue with a few white snowflakes on it), which as it turned out made them all the more fun to send.
Every year since then, even now that we can afford to just buy them at regular price, it’s been a ton of fun to go scouting for clearance cards in January. One year, when we had a new Target that didn’t yet know how much stock it would need, I bought three or four boxes each of half a dozen kinds, all at 90% off. Most years, I add more like half a dozen boxes: enough to replenish but not enough to oppress. Every year near Christmastime, I go down to the basement, pull out the two big cardboard boxes labeled “CARDS”, and pick which style I feel like sending this year.
This year, I went down and…no cards. It SEEMED like I had a lot of cards, because I had a dozen and a half boxes of leftovers from previous years; plus another half-dozen boxes of cards I bought just one box of; plus a bunch of things purchased but not often used, such as decorative business-size envelopes. But NO sets of enough cards to send out to everyone. This is the first time this has happened in probably close to fifteen years.
Paul had the good idea of getting cards from the ACLU or something. I loved that idea, but ACLU doesn’t have holiday cards, and neither did the next two charities I tried, so maybe that is less of A Thing now; I’ve noticed most of my list sends photo cards instead. But in any case, I don’t think I’d want to order this late.
Then I thought, well, it’s a perfect year to need new cards, because I want something a little more…SOMBER this year, anyway. But I looked around and didn’t see anything that exactly communicated what I wanted to say, which was, “Sure hope this isn’t our final year living in the world as we know it” or “Who’s really in the mood for this right now anyway?” or whatever.
So! New plan: this is The Year of Using Up All the Scraps from Previous Years. I have three of this card, two of that card, half a dozen of this other card, a nearly-full box of this card, etc., and I am going to clear them out to make space for all the cards I will buy THIS January on clearance.