Christina Wyman: A Christmas card might seem innocuous. How my dysfunctional family weaponized them. - NBCNewsTHINK
Growing up, I witnessed ruined holidays, heated arguments and long-term grudges over manufactured slights with greeting cards.author of the forthcoming novel “Jawbreaker”
This year, nearly half of Americans are sending holiday cards to connect with loved ones, according to a. I wonder how many of them are, like me, doing so out of a sense of obligation tinged with dread. While greeting cards and their feel-good platitudes can seem like a heartwarming, or at least harmless, holiday tradition, the truth is that for dysfunctional families like mine, they can be weaponized to inflict emotional pain.
A FedExed Christmas card was the only thing that stood between my uncle and a season’s worth of drama, anger and self-satisfied finger-wagging. The warm greetings, good wishes and array of smiling faces these cards contain generally conceal this dark undercurrent, of course. That is why I was relieved to find out that some of my fellow participants in support groups for toxic families have experienced the same holiday card-related guilt-tripping and conflict that I have. Now I want others who feel similarly to know they’re not alone either, even as I look for ways to minimize my participation in this holiday tradition.
One of my clearest childhood memories involved my uncle nearly forgetting to send his mother a holiday card. At the time, he lived in New York, and she lived in Florida. He panicked when, two days before Christmas, he still hadn’t deposited a card in the mail. Realizing his mistake, he rushed out to buy one and overnighted it via FedEx, earning it its place as the most expensive holiday card in our family’s history.
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