A Card for Every-and No-Taste

By John S. DeMott

Designing and printing Christmas cards is a mass-production industry, but choosing which one to send to whom is an intensely personal decision that reflects kaleidoscopically changing lifestyles. TIME Staff Writer John S. DeMott's report on the industry, his minor role in it, and the changes that are occurring in cards:

CHRISTMAS 1960. Married! Our cards, bearing a snowy, romantic Central Park scene, go out, announcing to everyone who already knows it that we are married. They are print-"personalized," an awful term, but: our two names look good for the first time in print, symbolizing a kind of permanence.

CHRISTMAS 1976. Divorced! My cards, bearing a drawing of a worried monk swinging on a bell rope to escape a mouse, will soon go out. They are a vehicle to announce to everyone who already knows it that I am single again. They are print-personalized, but anyone who is in any way important to me will get the card with the type crossed out and holiday homilies scribbled in. So why print-personalize the card at all? Don't ask such embarrassing questions.

Much has changed in the 16 years between our first Christmas card and my first Christmas card. For one thing, the card industry, which grew mightily during the 1960s, seems to have stabilized. My cards this year will go through the U.S. mail with about 3 billion others. The $20 or so I spent on cards--$5 above the national average--will be mixed in with $750 million spent by other Americans, plus $390 million for postage at 13-c- a lick; stamps account for more than half the 25-c- spent (on average) per card by every sender. The statistics are industry guesses. Only three of the 51 members of the National Association of Greeting Card Publishers are publicly held companies that report financial data; the others are closely held, including Kansas City-based Hallmark, the industry leader. Though the figures are impressive, the number of cards sent has not changed much in the past three years or so. The high cost of postage has caused some people to strike names off their card lists. But there are more people to send cards every year and the cards are getting more expensive, so the industry's dollar sales seem to be up a bit--though the lack of hard figures makes it difficult to be sure.

More startling are the social changes. Since my card will go to no more than half a dozen or so bona fide nuclear American families, it has been selected with little thought for that sturdy but dwindling sector of the populace. The other folks require a special kind of protocol. On my list, for example, are a number of unmarried men and women who are living together. A single card will go to each couple; it will be enclosed in an envelope addressed to both. What about single women who are practically living with married men? Two cards, individually addressed--one to the woman's home, the other to the man's office. In that case, discretion is the better part of Christmas cheer.

My problems pale when compared with those of some of the people I will receive cards from. One woman I know keeps the imprinters busy; in the past decade, she divorced three times, switching from her married name to her maiden name on Christmas cards. Then there are men who consider themselves married to other men. Will they send me a card, and what kind?

The U.S. greeting-card industry has unhesitatingly responded to this avalanche of social change. One way has been to try to restore order, to look back on simpler times when people got married, stayed married, bought houses, had kids and did not question who was playing what role. (It was never really that pat, of course, but the idea that it was still sells like crazy at Christmas.) The counters are dominated this year as every year by sentimental, traditional themes: Nativity scenes (though cards have been getting increasingly secular), churches, children, sleigh riders.

But the other, nontraditional choices arrayed before me have become countless; the themes seem to get more varied every year. The designers and versifiers at Hallmark, Rust Craft, Norcross have seen to that. Hallmark alone comes out with 1,000 new designs for Christmas every year. There are special cards for black grandfathers and for soul sisters. Worried about ecology? A Chicago company sells 300 designs printed on recycled paper. Got expensive tastes? Bloomingdale's in New York City offered a reproduction of Renoir's Le Moulin de la Galette at $183 for a box of 100. (It was sold out by October.) Cheap tastes? Any Woolworth's still sells boxes of 25 cards for $1.50. No taste whatsoever? There are X-rated Christmas cards bearing such legends as "The least you could do is give me an obscene phone call" and "Fondle me with care"--to cite two that are printable. Says Norman Dreitel, sales director of Miami's Mister B Greeting Card Co.: "People relate to X-rated cards. Television has opened up new and graphic ways of expressing time and mood."

Then there are cards from my dog to your dog, cards that hint at homosexuality ("Don we now our gay apparel" no longer means what it did in Christmases past), even a card for my friends who are pot smokers showing a marijuana plant. Feminists may send "winter solstice" cards instead of Christmas cards. Offered by the Page One bookstore in Pasadena, Calif., the cards feature mother earth themes to counter Christianity, which some feminists regard as oppressive to women.

Annual Ritual. Some Americans have given up sending Christmas cards. Chicago Real Estate Broker Joan Armstrong stopped sending cards after she got divorced. "I felt I had to explain and didn't know what to say," says she. But many Americans still make a project of the annual ritual. One of my colleagues and his wife buy their cards right after Christmas for the following season; it saves money. They send nonsectarian UNICEF cards to friends who are Jewish but not devout, Hannukah cards to Jewish friends who are devout, religious designs to fellow Christians and letters of varying length to out-of-towners. It takes weeks, and they rarely get through their list. I hope I'm on it--and I wonder what they'll think of my card.

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