25 Ways To NOT Display Christmas Cards

My morning muse for this morning is Jennifer of YouPinspireMe, who was recently crowing about how you know it’s Christmas time when your post about 25 Ways to Display Christmas Cards suddenly gets a ridiculous amount of organic search hits (no I won’t tell you how many, but I had to go cry over a beer about it).

My first thought was, “I obviously need to do something like this.” My second thought was, “Wait a minute, I don’t really get any Christmas cards anymore. Even my 90 year old grandmother has converted to e-cards. SERIOUSLY, who still uses mail??”

So in my best “keeping-up-with-the-Jones” fashion, I will show you 25 ways to fake your Christmas card prowess to other people when you host the Christmas get togethers.

1 – Take a trip to the Dollar store and write cards to yourself

Sign them using your left hand. And your kids. And your husband. Or just leave them blank. Who really picks up all your Christmas cards and looks at the inside anyway?

2 – After Christmas this year, go pilfer through your neighbours’ recycling bins

Steal all their Christmas cards for creative displaying next year. It’s not like people date them after all, and nobody’s going to realize that you don’t go to Jim’s Dental Clinic.

3 – Save the few cards you DO get and make an ever-growing card shrine

Is anybody going to notice that you’ve got 17 cards from Aunt Florence with her dog in them? Noooooo.

4 – Pretend you are a hipster, and that Christmas cards are beneath everyone’s dignity

I gave up Christmas cards before they were cool.

5 – Pretend you’re an eco-activist outraged on behalf of the Brazilian rain forest about Christmas waste

Did you know 17,000 acres of rainforest die every year so that you can have your Christmas cards? Did you know 87% of statistics are made up on the spot? Well there you have it, then.

6 – Be a topper

For a reasonable price, you can get yourself one of those Jib Jab (or similar) cards where you spend 37 hours finding the perfect headshots of all your family, cut their mouths just so, and have them do a singing card that will completely melt everybody’s brain. Oh! You still send out paper cards. That’s cute.

7 – Lie lie lieeeee

I had these awesome hanging card displays, but the cats decided to swing from them like Tarzan on vines, and then little Joey set them on fire in a freak Christmas tree lighting accident… 

8 – Own your laziness

Card displays? Ain’t nobody got time for dat. 

9 – Blame someone else

Yeah, I used to do these amazing things with all my Christmas cards, but these days nobody really sends cards anymore…. 

10 – Blame someTHING else

Card displays? You mean dust displays. We’ve got allergies in this household, so we just figured not displaying it makes it easier for me to clean. Of course I dust every day! Don’t run your finger across my mantle.

 11 – Claim another religion

Joe and I are Jewish. You didn’t know?

12 – Claim orthodoxy and/or extremism

Christmas is a heathen pagan holiday! What, our Christmas tree? I just keep it around so I can point at it and tell the kids that it’s evil.

13 – Pretend you keep the cards someplace else

My husband and I like to have your words present in our bedroom, watching over us while we sleep. No, really. 

14 – Rant about rising costs of stamps. Bonus points if you refer to the shrinking middle class

In MY day before the postal strike, they delivered on Saturday and you could buy stamps for a quarter each. No, there was no e-mail to send your Christmas cards out by, and the middle class wasn’t oppressed by the huge inflation of food and utility costs like it is today…

15 – Divert people’s attention

Nobody’s going to notice that you have no Christmas cards displayed if they’re too busy ogling your giant creepy clown Christmas ornament collection…

16 – Change the subject

Hey look! Is that our neighbour shoveling his driveway naked? My mistake, that’s a Winnebago. 

17 – Hide in the kitchen the entire party

This is one of my personal favourite tactics. Not to mention, people usually feel guilted into helping you do prep.

18 – Invite all the kids

Who can discuss or notice anything at all when you’ve got 10 under 10 underfoot?

19 – Pretend that you’re the victim of family feuding

Note: you can’t blame the husband’s family for never forgiving you for marrying their son if any of those relatives are present at your party. 

20 – Blame the postal service

Yeah, I haven’t gotten anything. Not even my bills. Maybe they’re on strike again. Or maybe they’re just swamped with holiday backlog. That’s probably it…

21 – Blame the husband

You know he looks at them and just throws them out! I keep telling him that’s rude, but you know how men are…

22 – Blame the dog

Dog ate my Christmas cards. That still works, right?

23 – Spin a tale about how you moved

I let everyone know our new address, honest!

24 – Spin a more hilarious tale about how you were forcibly removed from the Christmas card lists. Everywhere

There’s some excellent offensive Christmas card sites you can cite as reasons… 

25 – Confess

Yeah, we just don’t really do the Christmas card thing!