Long ago and far away …
It was way back in 1977—45 years ago!—that I started creating my own Christmas cards. For this year’s festive holiday season (it is December, after all) I decided to dig them all out and share them on this here blog thingie (LUCKY YOU, dear reader!). While I have all the hand-drawn ones (#1-24, ending—as near as I can remember—in 2000), I’m missing a few from 2000 on. I know some of them where replaced by photo books, which I created and sent to close friends, but I’m uncertain what I did in the years before that …
Anyway, here are the first eight cards from 1977 through 1984 (you knew I was going to milk this content for a whole month, right?) with some notes. Some of these cards are sappy and sentimental, but most are a long drive to a bad joke (some of which are quite non-woke and kind of dated in this day and age, but hey … they’re also decades old). Most of these cards were printed on 8.5 x11″ paper and trimmed and folded. The images below are usually stacked in this order: outside of card, inside of card, backside of card.
As always, click on the images below to see the cards larger on your screen.
1977 • CARD #01
My first card was hand-colored (50 of them!) and kinda sappy, but then again I have always been kinda sappy.
1978 • CARD #02
Yeah, this was topical in like 1978 but kinda lost now. It’s a reference to Steve Martin and his skits on SNL with Dan Akyroyd where they played the wild and crazy Czech brothers. Good times. Another “hand-colored” one.
1979 • CARD #03
Yep, it’s official: I was obsessed with Saturday Night Live. I like this one, though, and I still miss Gilda. And I hand-colored all the red on all 50 of them. Original poem by yours truly (I think).
1980 • CARD #04
This one strikes me as a last-minute thing, but I got pretty daring and added some new colors to my palette … but I’m guessing this one was a bitch to color, especially 50 of them. Also: SAPPY.
1981 • CARD #05
I’m not sure what the deal was with this one … it didn’t have any kind of message inside. Did I write personal messages to 100 people? Did I even know 100 people? The mind boggles. I do like that Santa illustration I did, though. I think I still have the original of it around here somewhere.
1982 • CARD #06
Probably another last minute one, although I can tell by this point I was using the high-end Xerox copier we had in the art department at work. We had black, blue, and red ink cartridges, so technology dictated my design choices. I probably stole the paper from work, too. I was like that. My back-of-card banter got a bit more lippy, too.
1983 • CARD #07
A long way to go for a stupid joke. The front and back combined for one image, with my scarf flying amongst the falling show. Also: First card to feature me. Crooked printing, too.
1984 • CARD #08
WOW. I don’t know what possessed me to do this. Dormont is a small suburb of Pittsburgh, PA. I guess I was somehow obsessed with The 3 Stooges at that point. Or just going for a really cheap joke.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
I no longer live at 121 Academy Ave. and haven’t for well over 20 years now.
Come back next Friday (December 10th) for eight more festive Christmas cards by yours truly, all of them guaranteed to contain even lamer jokes!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
innocent bystander 
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