Folks, it’s that time of year. After weeks of baking, shopping, wrapping, and suffering a spastic colon from worrying about how to get it all done, Christmas is now over. Time to put away the decorations – although who am I kidding? I can guarantee that come February that wreath will still be hanging on my door, turning an interesting shade of orange, while I wonder about how I can repurpose the pinecones and ribbon that adorn it.

If I play my cards right, I can get my cousin Roseanne to come over and help me wrap up the few little figurines that I put out at Christmastime. I don’t put up a tree, save for a ceramic one from the 1960s. Although I have toyed with the idea. But the reality of me leaving it up all year round and having to think up how to decorate it for things like Arbor Day, or just plain throwing a sheet over it to avoid having to haul it back downstairs gets overwhelming.

I’m still trying to find spots for a few of the gifts I received; all of them welcome, but sometimes without a natural resting place. For example. I love getting new tea towels each year. A normal person would retire the old ones, stained, frayed, and burned from that unfortunate chocolate chip cookie incident.  I wonder how to cram the new ones on top of the old ones. You know, in case I need them for something.

So I can live with the bulging kitchen drawers, keeping a wine bottle on the floor because where else am I going to put it?, and having so much underwear I had to get one of those plastic bag dispensers to hang on the wall. (Again, normal people would retire things once they became stained, frayed, or burned from a chocolate chip incident.)

What I don’t know what to do with are these photo cards. They begin arriving the week after Thanksgiving. I enjoy getting them, especially from people I don’t get to see very often, and I proudly display them so I can have fond remembrances and warm holiday thoughts of all of my dear, dear friends and relatives.

So many greetings! My hand hurts.

On the other hand, I do get a little resentful that married people with kids have it so easy. I used to help my mom address hundreds of cards every year, and even when she did send out the rare photo card, she’d hand sign each one of them. These days, you just type anything you want into Shutterfly and bing-ety bang-ety, your holiday greeting is served. But wait, there’s more! Services like Shutterfly can even MAIL them for you as well. Having no cute kids to dress up in matching costumes, or not having taken any cool trips during the year (does Big Flats, NY count?), and being tied to my old-fashioned ways, I feel like I still have to buy traditional Christmas cards – at 75% off the day after, mind you – and hand write each and every one of them.  Here’s how it usually goes:

• mid-November. Begin wondering what I did with the boxes of cards I bought a year ago.
• post-Thanksgiving: Find cards, but let sit on dining room table for at least 3 weeks, claiming it’s “too early” to be thinking about cards.
• December 15-18: plan to write cards, but fill with dread about having to do it.  Wonder if I should just throw in the towel. Realize my pals who live outside the US are going to have to get emails instead.
• December 19: make tea, put on Christmas carols, cry, then marathon-write cards like I’m a 10 year old making iPhones. Complain that my hands cramp up and vow that this is the last year I’m writing cards.

But, as I drop the last stack of holiday greetings in the mailbox, I do pat myself on the back for always getting it done. But you can see how those photo cards can stir up feelings of jealousy and rage. Not because I forgot to have kids, but because of all the cards! So many cards.

So now it’s time to put away the holiday fare, and what on earth do I do with all of these cards? Being a Cancerian and a borderline hoarder, it’s hard to throw anything away. I love encountering things from my past – I recently found a card I’ve kept for 40 years. Will I throw it away? Never. But can I really keep any more?

In years past, I would keep these photo cards in an album, but in my defense, I was a lot younger and most of my friends didn’t have kids yet. Then as both families and cards starting increasing, I started cutting off the “card” part and keeping the photos.  This turned out to be a serious error in judgement on my part, as 20 years later I don’t even know who some of these kids are.  But still, I found space on a shelf somewhere. Soon, I’d run out of albums and resort to dumping them in a box.  Now I’ve got albums and boxes full of pictures of people who are now in their 20s and who I can’t even remember.

Somehow this seems wrong.

Sometimes the pictures get cropped and stuck around my house. Kitchen bulletin board; stuffed into already-framed photos; sometimes they go on the fridge. At this point, there are more child pictures on my fridge than food items in it.  And still, when it comes to these cards I simply can’t throw them away. If I keep any more, I fear I may have to move into a hotel. This may be a cry for help; it may be asking for permission to enjoy these things for a few weeks and then recycle them back to the earth.

Am I alone here? I swear, next year I’m sending out a photo card with a stock family photo on it. And I give you all permission to throw it away.