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Since the holiday season is upon us, we would like to take a brief moment to acknowledge a known sore spot with those of us who are infertile. On an almost daily basis we are sifting through a larger amount of physical (snail) mail which has been growing post-thanksgiving. Tucked into these piles of online and store catalogs are the little things that seem to send those of us sans-kids into our dark places. Yep, we’re talking about Christmas cards.
However, these just aren’t any normal Christmas cards like the one’s you might receive from an out-of-town grandparent that has a $15.00 check inside. Nope. These are the cards that come as a postcard or in an envelope that display our overly fertile friends and their grouping of kids all in their holiday best. Most of these tend to be themed, quite poorly, to show how children are growing year after year. The worst ones may even include a family update newsletter but that is a rant for another article.
Not to say that this is an entirely awful thing to want to display your family in a photograph to keep up with minimal correspondence every holiday season, but to send them out to those of us who desire to have the chance to one day create these pictures for ourselves is bad taste. After a while of infertility most friends should be aware of our feelings and understand that viewing a holiday card with them showing off their children front and center can, unfortunately, make us upset. Especially since the holiday season already brings its own set of sad emotions.
Here is our plea; DO NOT SEND US ANY OF YOUR STUPID, STAGED HOLIDAY CARDS THAT FEATURE YOUR FAMILY IN A PHOTO OF ANY KIND. We do not care to see your entire family in matching red and/or green holiday sweaters in front of a phony snowy forest backdrop. We do not care that it took you all afternoon at Sears or Kmart or JC Penney’s photo department and do not want to hear the story of how the photographer coaxed all the kids into only one good shot. Please do not make us waste paper and postage by throwing these straight in the trash or better yet using the “return-to-sender” feature of our postal system.
A lot of us infertile folks may think this in our heads, but we wanted to say it out loud…Please stop rubbing it in our faces that you have children and we do not!
December 25th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
AMEN! I loathe, LOATHE those effin’ cards. NOT interested.
My name is Beth and I love your blog. I totally relate. I have been infertile for too many months and years. FINALLY I am pregnant and very grateful. But it was a confusing and heart breaking process to get here.
So I totally get it. Boy, do I.
May 2010 be all you have ever wanted and more. It’s nice meeting you.
B
December 28th, 2009 at 1:28 am
LOVE. IT. If I didn’t worry that it would be in bad taste, and definitely land me on Santa’s naughty list, I’d deface every one of those G-D things that end up in my mailbox. Love the blog, love the snark. Added you to my blogroll, come check me out.
January 11th, 2010 at 8:12 am
I hear you loud and clear…the worst offenders in my book are those who send card that feature ONLY their children. It’s as if the source of these kids have disappeared or no longer matter. My response when I see these cards: “What sort of message is that? I’m friends with you, not your kids.” I wrote about this topic last year and got some interesting comments. Slowly (too slowly) but surely our message is getting through.
http://coming2terms.com/2008/12/21/reveal-yourself.aspx
Keep up the great blog!
January 15th, 2010 at 8:03 am
Great post, good job there, I love it! I bookmarked your blog for future reference, I am too busy to go through them one by one now, but thank you for the post!
February 24th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
This is the best thing that I have read in years!! As a result, i have stopped sending Christmas cards and friends and family are mad at ME – because I am the one who is too “lazy” or “insensitive” or “selfish” to care enough about people to send cards. Been to therapy, talked it out, yadda yadda yadda. The fact remains that I absolutely despise the months of October – January. Halloween costumes, kids coming to the house, Thanksgiving with family and friends (when I am happier with a bottle of wine) and the repugnant Christmas holidays. Family and friends do not get it. Why should they? They have their cute little kids to care for.
June 8th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
I plan on extracting revenge on my fertile misfit friends by sending out Xmas cards with my cats on them.