Hey, Look at Me. Oh, and Merry Christmas.

Every year, when we receive Christmas cards in the mail, I tape them up on the dining room wall. I like it. I like that it makes the house look Christmasy and warm and friendly. I like to see the varied images of stables and mangers and wisemen and even Santa and reindeer and snowy landscapes decorating the plain-in-every-other-season wall.

But this year, as I look at the wall, I feel slightly disturbed. We've received six "cards" so far. Only they're not actually cards. They are photographs. Photographs of the sender and family with some holiday-ish greeting imprinted on the front. So I have pictures of six families taped on the dining room wall. It's weird.

Before I go further, I want to clearly put it out there that I did that once. I sent picture greetings of my firstborn on her first Christmas and I wanted everyone to see how beautiful she was. I paid Costco to turn one of her photos into a card, of sorts, and mailed them out to our friends and family. I did it and even now, if I had the money, I'd be tempted to do it again. I'm totally willing to lump myself in with the crowd when I say that it's weird. Because I know that I want to do it so that you can see how cute my kids are. And what in the world does that have to do with Jesus coming to earth as a baby?

As if Christmas weren't enough about us already.

Now we send pictures of ourselves to long lists of people, most of whom aren't close enough to us that they would have a picture of us in their homes otherwise. It feels a little presumptuous. It feels a little sneaky. "I know a photo of me and my children couldn't make it into your home in any other way, but because it's Christmas, you're now obligated to display us for a while." <sly smile>

I think I'd rather receive misleading, watercolor images of cozy mangers filled with sweet, clean hay--however unlikely -- or even ridiculous renderings of blond, blue-eyed virgin Marys -- even more unlikely. I think I prefer sarcastic cartoon Santas making rude jokes to his reindeer. I think I prefer anything to saying "Hey, look at me. Oh, and Merry Christmas. Are you still looking at me? What do you think of these matching outfits?"