Have a Merry, I Suppose

Re-Gifting Comes to Substack

Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Sending seasonal emails is so dismissive, almost as hopelessly idle as recycling content for your Substack page.

Sure it's easy to just put "Merry Christmas" in the header and be done with it but it's just lazy.

And sometimes it can be just plain rude, especially when you're telling your friends and family that you're "doing emails" and not sending gifts or cards this year but instead you are using all of that money to make a donation to some charity.

First, no one believes you really did that and when they are at your house for New Year's your friends will - under their breath - point out to one another the existence of the surprisingly expensive and unnecessary new food processor you just got. Second, kids would prefer to get socks - yes, socks - than to be told their gift money went to stop nuclear war.

That being said, it can be rather amusing to inform that Gaza-addled Hamas supporter acquaintance of yours that you have had a tree planted in her honor on a kibbutz (it's moves from rather amusing to really funny if you actually do it).

But that's more of a Hanukah gift.

And then the emails always end up being cloyingly sweet and/or the writer tries to make them "wacky" with a throw away closing line like "Santa has left the building!" It may have sounded funny in their head, but its only relevance lay in its confusion.

Or even worse, the emails are a crushingly tedious recitation of what an AMAZING year they and their family had, sprinkled with such astonishingly world-changing nuggets like how their problematic, Hazelden-frequenting teenager Billy "just got his license back!" and how "Janey got a double smiley face in finger-painting class for her Christmas elephant! Sure it has two trunks but it's soooo adorable it went right on the fridge!"

Good for her - Mozart was composing symphonies by that age.

Worst of all is when people try to "go all meta" on the season by sending out a seemingly endless rant that can only be deemed clever if you ignore its hypocrisy about how Christmas emails and recycled – re-gifted, if you will - jaundiced content are so dismissive.

But I digress.

Merry Christmas Everyone!