#126 Love Hallmark Style

One of the places we’ve become less personal in recent years is in the card industry. Yet we seem more personal than ever. A trip through your local Hallmark will confirm there’s a card for every occasion. From the bar mitzvah of your half-Chinese cousin to the death of your aunt’s shit-zu. Hidden in all this variety is the inescapable reality that we shop for cards and don’t in fact make them ourselves. So to some degree, the message we impart to our loved ones is: I care enough to buy the very best canned sentiment I can discover.
Now I’m not saying that folks don’t look long and hard for just the right card. I myself have sent many a minute to its ultimate wasted oblivion reading and reading someone else’s idea of what I’m supposed to feel. From schmaltzy to corny to downright absurd, I’ve navigated the worst verse and the most horrible doggerel in my attempt to fulfill the artificial cultural imperative placed on us by the card industry.
Because really, try making your own card these days. Load it with all the personal sentiment and frilly decoration you can. Like as not, Aunt Lulabelle will sniff a little snort of derision. Her body language will indicate in no uncertain terms that she thinks homemade is cheap. Perhaps that’s why Americans retreated to the safety of surrogate sentiment. If aunty doesn’t like the card, well, hell, you didn’t write it, so at least one level of responsibility is avoided.
For a while, when everyone was a flutter with the newness of email and the internet, E-cards were all the rage. Websites abounded featuring free cards that you could pick out and email to your loved ones. Some of them just sent a link. The loved one couldn’t even just open the e-card, they had to go to a website and perform some rigamarole to download the pseudo-sentiment. So the recipient was treated to a double slap in the face, the indignity of a card that wasn’t a card—try storing an animated e-card in your special bundle of love letters—and the inconvenience of fetching the damn thing yourself. It would be like me calling my wife and telling her to pick up a Valentine card for herself on the way home. And spare no expense, honey.
But the card folk won. Seems like even though e-cards are only a slight degree of indifference more than store cards, the American public still treasures something they can hold. Along with special expensive wrapping. Paper that goes from shelf to present to landfill all in one gift frenzy.
My Brother-in-law and sister do it right. Come special whatever day they visit a card shop together. The giver picks out and reads aloud the cards he or she thinks most applies to the other. They laugh, they kiss, they cry. They make the experience personal. And then they put the money they saved into a special place and use it later to go somewhere—together.
America, ya gotta love it.