Hollaback Girl

The holidays are in full swing. The Target Hanukkah clings have been mauled by tiny fingers leaving nothing but fingerprints and a set of candles that dangle in the air sans menorah. Decorations from years of preschool love and tiny turkey hands and painted menorahs adorn every knob and shelf. The menorah is splattered with waxy drippings, the floor with wrapping paper from 3 nights ago. There is Christmas music blaring in the background because I am a Jew who loves Christmas music. Don’t judge.

The fridge is half full from a wonderful Thanksgiving feast that was mostly demolished by our amazing crew of family and friends who gratefully took over and pretty much prepared everything, but just cooked it within my house. Leftovers consist of things like one turkey leg, a tub of blue cheese, a half used can of pumpkin, and 8 different half used sticks of unsalted butter (for some reason we had a butter consolidation problem this year- will have to address next year). The season of gratitude and gluttony is well underway.

I don’t do the holidays well. I mean I love them, but in a sloppy and casual way; not in a Pinterest-y way. We are sort of half decorated, and marginally seasonally appropriate (given that it is December, it is probably time to throw out the pumpkins and gourds). Which brings me to the holiday card. I adore receiving holiday cards. I love running to the mailbox and collecting cards from familiar faces old and new, the goofy ones, the precious ones, island shots and Disney shots and backyard shots, and the formal attempts from families and couples that span the history of me, and of Phil, and of me and Phil together.

I am excellent at receiving holiday cards. I am horrible at making and sending out my own holiday card.

Every year I tell myself it is about the sentiment, the opportunity to reach out to friends and family and colleagues near and far and remind them that we are thinking of them, that we wish them the best. It feels silly and odd that I would wait until a single point in the calendar year to do this; that it takes a sale at Tiny Prints to prompt my thinking here, yet it does.

Pre-wedding and children, my cards were almost always pure sentiment. Post-kids, my cards almost exclusively included pictures of them. This year, I was oddly inspired to put me and Phil in the card as well. I worked hard copiously selecting pictures of the children and one single shot of me and Phil. But it got late and I got tired. My general overall laziness and pregnancy inspired laziness got the better of me, and when I had trouble cropping and moving pictures I just decided to give up and print the damn thing in its “good enough” stage. After all, who am I kidding? This is real. The people who love us accept us as we are, sans Pinterest glam.

The cards came yesterday. And smack dab in the dead center of the card is a picture of me and Phil at Disney World. And next to Phil is a strange unknown man also at Disney World. He is wearing a black sweatshirt and has the world’s largest back, or at least it seems that way given the amount of space strange man’s back takes up on our holiday card. There are some smaller shots of the children that surround the back. But fundamentally I have prepared a holiday card of best wishes from this man’s back. I can’t take my eyes off of it. It is like the holiday card version of the lip synching space kitten from Miley’s American Music Awards appearance. It hovers there in the background. You want to look away but you can’t.

And so, should you get a holiday card from us, it will feature the Meer family and the man with the large back. Happy Holidays from all of us. If you don’t receive this card from us, don’t feel bad about that either. Historically, I spend like 3 days trying to make this card and then order like 20 copies to be printed. Which makes absolutely no sense. And somehow all of that seems exactly right, at least for this band of merry misfits. In this way it is the perfect reflection of how we celebrate this and pretty much every season around here. Accidental, well-intentioned, with joy and mis-directed purpose, poor cropping skills, randomness, and love.

And so I say to you, happy holidays! Wishing you a season and New Year filled with much joy and strange men’s backs.