Four and twenty blackbirds
Brisk and bright evenings around here. The carillon in the church chimes Christmas music into the night. Each note is full and frosted.
How many shopping days until Christmas, sir?
Why, that is a world of time, my good man. Don’t rush me. (The type who winds up Christmas Eve at the drugstore. “Quick, give me a fifth of perfume. Gift-wrapped.”)
Christmas cards are the social status of our times. I don’t mean the assorted pack from the drugstore. I mean the tailor-mades. Ten years ago they were $20. And I don’t have that many new friends.
The cards are handsome. I run to Dickens type cards. Snow and fireplaces. Children and sleds. Our name is on them in raised letters — you could read them with your fingertips blindfolded.
Be careful you don’t cut your fingers on my Christmas cards.
About other cards. Having shopped Christmas cards we are aware to the penny what other people’s cards costs.
“Will you look at the cards the Jones’s sent this year?” asks the lady of the house. “I saw with my own eyes that they were listed at $80 a hundred.”
“Probably all that gold on them,” agrees the master.
“Next year,” says the lady, “I think we won’t send any cards at all. Just call our closest friends on the telephone and wish them a Merry Christmas.”
“For heaven’s sake, what brought this on?” he asks.
The lady says angrily: “George, sometimes I think you don’t listen to a word I say.”
“Let’s have a Christmas buzz,” says George. “Where’s the gin?”
Americans send each other two-and-a-half billion Christmas cards. The cost of remembering auld acquaintance runs $300 million. Uncle Sugar’s extra mailmen get another $100 million.
The average card costs 14 cents. People who send me 14-centers and get one of my 27-centers in return are status deflated.
Merry Christmas, friend. I have just let the air out of your status.
It is a bugging time of the year.
“Look at this!” says the lady of the house. “You’d think they were millionaires sending out a card like this. And their poor little boy running around in patched pants!”
As Christmas cards come in, we stick them on the wall. The gorgeous 50-centers go in the middle.
We don’t approve of them. But it shows we have wealthy friends.
It is important to put up the cards of people who may be visiting your home over Christmas. They look over the display — “How pretty!” But they are looking to see where you put their card.
Stick a couple of foreign cards in the middle. It lets you throw away a line: “A charming couple who asked us out on their yacht in Greece. Great friends of Ari’s. Always borrowing a cup of fuel oil from each other.”
The visiting people can hardly wait to get to the next call and cut you up.
“The Lord loveth a cheerful giver,” said my grandma. And we are certainly cheerful when we send out a 27-center and compare it with a 20-center we get in return.
If we get a 35-center, we are not so cheerful.
“Don’t you think all that gold leaf is a little — well, too much?” we say.
The household wren is a walking catalogue of Christmas card prices. Knows the nudge from Macy’s to Magnin’s.
The people who send you a card, and you didn’t send them one. We hedge that with a New Year’s card and a note. “We were so busy planning a Christmas ski trip, I was late with Christmas cards. You know how I is.
You know how it is, don’t you? Of course you do.
This column originally appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle on Dec. 10, 1968.
It is important to put up the cards of people who may be visiting your home over Christmas. They look over the display — “How pretty!” But they are looking to see where you put their card.