Homemade Cheapskate Christmas Cards

I never considered myself a 'cheapskate' for doing it, but each December, when 'Christmastime' would stomp its mighty black boot across the path of our carefree stroll thru the year, I would speed myself down to the nearby card shop at Oakridge (Hallmark) and purchase ONE (1) suitable Christmas card that I could then send out to all my friends/family.

And no, I don't mean to say that I bought ONE PACKAGE of 25 or so cards; or that there was only one person in my 'friends/family' catagory. I mean to say that I'd go down to the shop and purchase a single, solitary, individual, all by its lonesome, 'zero plus one' Christmas card. ("Why buy two when one will do.") However, the key phrase here is the mention of a 'suitable' card and not just ANY card.

The yearly plan always required that I find a Christmasy scene (outdoorsy; snowmen; xmas lights) that had enough room left over in the foreground to allow the placement therein of my own cartoon characters (drawn on a clear cel page) that would, when placed overtop the image, seem to be interacting with the original scenery. As if the two segments had been sharing the same page together from the git go. (If that's being a cheapskate, so be it.)


From that point, it was just a matter of printing off copies of the now bastardized card in the quantity needed. While most of these Frankenstein card creations have been lost over the years or mailed out until stock was depleted, I still have a few of the 'postal series' that I created for any of the people on my mail delivery route that dared to give me any Christmas tips.

On the day following any 'tip giving' (which ranged from $5 to $100) the unsuspecting home owner would awake to find one of these nasty hybrid cards lurking in his/her mailbox that said: 'thanks' and was signed: 'from your postman'. It seemed like the least I could do to acknowledge the giving of gift between strangers.


As of this writing, I have yet to head out to the shop to find this year's card to be bastardized - a ritual I look forward to as much as I do the roasting of chestnuts. But time is ticking and, being the one time postal employee that I am, I should know better than most, that the looming deadline for successful pre-Christmas delivery of xmas cards is close at hand.