On paper, it’s almost a Hallmark holiday
In South Ozone Park, Nurse Vivian and Pop took Christmas cards seriously. The day after Thanksgiving, the Paulsons drove to Great Eastern Mills out on Long Island to pick out Christmas cards: mostly nativity scenes, a few snowmen, one box of foil-lined envelopes to impress Aunt Rita. One box of “Season’s Greetings!” for all of Nurse Vivian’s Jewish friends from Kings County Nursing School.
The only person who got an individual card was Grand Aunt Beatrice, who by force of age and whiskey had become the matriarch. Pop picked out a funny card for her, something like Santa Claus landing on an outhouse yelling, “Rudolph, you idiot! I said the Schmidt house!”
Seems antique now, but in the ’60s, the annual Christmas card was Facebook.
Pop kept a list in a spiral-bound stenographer’s notebook, with more than 300 names. He had a system, in that as he or Nurse Vivian wrote out the card, they noted the year underneath the address. If the person sent us a card back, the year was circled. Three years without a circle got the person off the list.
The big change came in 1963. Robert Moon had divided the United States up into sections, and called it the Zone Improvement Plan, or ZIP code. On July 1, 1963, the Post Office implemented this system to make mail delivery “zippy.” Three months later, they issued a list of two-letter codes for each state, so instead of Calif. for California, we use CA.
Today’s trivia: What’s the only state to change its two-letter code? At the request of Canada, Nebraska was changed from NB to NE. Seems that some Omaha people got confused with New Brunswick.
Pop looked up everyone’s new ZIP code, thinking that this would give him the edge over Aunt Rita, whose card always arrived before the first candle on the Advent wreath was lit. But alas, he never got the drop on her, as, no matter what else happened that November, her card was in our mailbox on the 28th. A halfcentury later, she still beats the Paulsons.
Unlike Nurse Vivian, instead of boxed cards, Brian and I take Solstice/Kwanzaa/Noel/Hanukkah photos. There’ve been a few serious Andy Williamses, but mostly we aim for Yuletide-of-the-Absurd. “Holiday Greeting From the Planet Krypton”; “Dance of the Sugarplum Pekingese”; and a Pirate Christmas. The year Bandit moved in, we dressed up as Jonny Quest. My personal favorite? The Village People and their Village Puppies.
Brian and I like filling out the envelopes. We go through our Superman address book just as Pop did, except we tend not to eliminate names. Partly that’s my OCD: I like to have a name under each letter, and although we have plenty of F’s and P’s, we cannot afford to give up Quirions, Yateses and Zweifels. First reader to identify as Xerxes gets a free Christmas card!
Last year was not the best year in the Fisher-Paulson family, but we still have our traditions, and we went High Concept.
When Zane was little, he had a fascination with ninjas, only he had a hard time pronouncing the word. Drew masked warriors all over the bedroom walls, but when the cartoon came on, he’d say, “Wanna watch Ginger Turtles.”
So 12 months ago, Crazy Mike brought his camera, and photographed the teenaged (and middle-aged) ninja mutant turtles, in front of the works of Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael and Leonardo: a Cowabunga Christmas.
As Zane posed for the Vitruvian Turtle, he hugged me and said, “I just love being part of this family.”
This year, I’m keeping myself too busy to wallow. So I suggested we set a goal: “Let’s beat Aunt Rita this year!”
Brian sighed, “The woman’s in her late 90s.”
“She’s got to slow down sometime. And with Zane gone, no photo. No props. No costumes. We can beat her.” We asked an artist, Joe Phillips, to draw the FisherPaulson family.
Joe’s brilliant: Just for a moment, we looked happy and whole and under one roof. On paper, at least.
Life doesn’t always imitate art. But it gives us something to aspire to. Our card is not as we are, but as we might be on Christmas morning, had the bungalow in the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior been just a little bit more like a Hallmark movie.
I realize now that none of us really gets a Norman Rockwell holiday, and most of us are like ginger turtles. But all of us are like Zane, in that we “just love being part of this family.”
The Fisher-Paulsons might not be the most accurate, but we are the most zippy: postmarked 24-November-2018.
Merry Christmas, Aunt Rita.
Brian and I take Solstice/Kwanzaa/ Noel/Hanukkah photos. Mostly we aim for Yuletideof-the-Absurd.