My very limited edition X-mas card this year featured the above image, an homage to the huge new wind turbine that Carleton college recently built. It's a marvel of clean form, and the first of its kind for any college in the United States. Starting with a Victorian card, I 'shopped in a picture of the turbine from a photo I made this fall, then used that as a template to paint the turbine in distant grays. I loved the little jolt of excitement even I get at the prospect of Santa about to visit my town, Northfield, MN. Displayed here on a computer screen at a whopping 450 pixels wide, you can hardly miss the message. But as an X-mas card, very few people looked at the image long enough to get it. Could it be the “fall out” factor?
As kids in our family, we came to race through Christmas cards for what we called “fall out”―cash, checks, candy, sparkles, and other goodies that came tucked inside holiday cards. No question, cash was best. We'd rip the envelope apart, glance at the graphics for a nanosecond, then shake the card over our head looking for fall out. When my mom happened to open the card for us, she would take her time, and I vividly remember the fleeting but intense impatience I'd feel as she carefully read the two or three sentence message printed inside. Once teens, of course, we learned to chill out and feign an interest in reading sentiment rhymed in couplets. But after that once-in-a-lifetime Christmas on which some did-well-in-business-this-year uncle sent along a spanking new $50 bill, it was impossible not to feel your blood rush at the prospect of a card with a return address from out of town.
So as people crashed through their cards this season, and failed to note the little turbine in the distance, I have come to suspect that as a fall out family we may not have been alone. If so, sorry―this year my fall out was on the front. Including something that absolutely no one found.
Happy Holiday.
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