Christmas Greetings Get Personal : Quest for ‘Right’ Card Takes on New Fervor

When Dean Musgrove of Northridge heard that his wife, Janice, was expecting their first child, he immediately thought of his Christmas cards.

He wondered, he said, how he could incorporate the new child into their holiday photograph series in which each annual shot functions as a scene in a play . . . or a soap opera.

Musgrove’s innovative and highly committed approach to Christmas cards started in 1981 when he “decided he didn’t want a bought Hallmark version,” he said.

A Sequel

He remembered his childhood family Christmas pictures of five children and the family dog or cat, and decided to create a modern-day version of the typical family scene.

As a professional photographer--Musgrove, 35, is deputy photo editor at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner--he naturally turned to photography as the medium. His first epic-style card was shot in downtown Los Angeles, with the Musgroves fleeing a police officer (a friend) after spraying “Merry Christmas” graffiti (with white flocking) on a block wall.

The next year he decided to make it a sequel, and did a courtroom scene--in an actual courtroom--in which the Musgroves stood trial for painting the Christmas graffiti. Their baby, Kelly, debuted on the fourth card, when she dynamited the couple out of jail.

Now in its eighth year, the epic continues. This season, in an effort to capture the effect of the North Pole, the Musgroves rented a cabin at Big Bear Lake and even arranged for an artificial snow setting in case there wasn’t enough natural snow to provide the desired effect.

Musgrove now prints 225 cards a year and provides a photocopy of all previous cards to help his friends understand the epic. Some friends, he said, call him weeks before Christmas with address changes, concerned that they might not receive the current installment.

“The threatening part is, I can’t blow it now,” said Musgrove, who plans to continue the saga for two more years before beginning another 10-year series.

And it’s with that intensity that many people go about selecting or designing their Christmas cards. David Rapkin, a clinical and health psychologist at UCLA and in Santa Monica, said that the vigor with which people in their 30s are pursuing the “right” Christmas card is part of a post-’60s revival of tradition, with a twist.

Rapkin, 38, said that many people today, unlike his parents’ post-Depression, post-war generation, want to take tradition a step beyond the ordinary, using humor or creativity. Some of the urge for personal expression, he said, may be the result of the “cool, distancing quality of so many of our tools and toys,” such as computers and VCRs.

After a day of word processing, it’s not surprising that someone might want to create a funny, personal Christmas card, he said. “People are now comfortable taking traditions lightly; they don’t feel it will offend anyone.”

Sending Christmas cards is a “ritual of acknowledged bonds, especially when more direct kinds of bonds--like getting together when two people are busy or live far apart--are not possible.” The Christmas card, Rapkin said, is a token way of saying, “We’re connected.”

Saul Bernstein, professor of 2-dimensional art at Cal State Northridge, said Christmas cards are perceived as an obligation, and in today’s world, people are trying to provide entertainment.

“It’s what the card physically can do, not the meaning. If confetti pops out, or there’s a reindeer who can eat out of your hand, that’s great.”

Bernstein said card purchases “today are not really thought out. They do reflect what you’re trying to do, subconsciously. You wouldn’t send a funny card to a banker with whom you’re trying to close an important deal.

“The invention of the humorous card is probably a Southern California phenomenon,” Bernstein said.

Humorous cards sell well, reports Pam Johnson, card buyer for the four Aahs specialty card and novelty stores. “We don’t carry any religious cards at all. We find there are two different types of Christmas card buyers: ones who want the more comical card, and the ones that want artsy cards.”

Johnson, 27, after ordering from 25 to 30 different card companies for the Aahs chain, said choosing her own card was difficult. She selected one with dolphins wearing Santa Claus caps.

“A lot of the cards that do well for us have palm trees or relate to Southern California; people like to send them back East,” Johnson said.

Business Tool

Bernstein said that for many, the Christmas card has become a business tool, a calling card that is used to stimulate business.

Robin Carroll, owner of Robin Carroll Stationery in Encino, said that the trick for a memorable business greeting card is to come up with something unusual that reflects the business. For a clothing manufacturer, Carroll made a card out of cloth; for a placement agency, she used a card with a telephone receiver, in black and white, that said, “Have you heard? . . . “

For personal cards as well as business greetings, some people spend thousands of dollars. While the average cost of a set of 20 cards at Aahs is $7.50 to $9.50, Carroll has customers who spend as much as $1,200 for 150 cards. “I can’t believe what they’re spending for cards; I’m having the biggest year I’ve ever had,” said Carroll, who has been too busy to buy or design cards to send to her own friends this year.

Crying Children

One woman came to Carroll, frustrated because the portrait shots she had taken of her children for the family Christmas card didn’t turn out right. “The children were crying,” said Carroll, who turned the situation into an asset by designing a card that said, “For crying out loud, have yourself a Merry Christmas.”

People put a lot of energy into the photographs, which tend to be most frequently used by parents who want to show their friends the growth and development of their children.

“I’m so proud of my children, I just want everyone to see them,” said Jan Wells, 44, of Agoura. The Wells typically put off taking their traditional hanging-up-the-stocking shot until the last minute, then rush the film to a fast-photo shop.

One customer at Saks Fifth Avenue, Woodland Hills, a lawyer, is enclosing with her cards a photograph of her cat on top of a stack of law books, said Andy Vecchio, manager of Gift Galleries at Saks.

Vecchio said he typically sees “customers buying three different kinds of cards, some for the friends they like and others for the ones they like less or not at all.”

One Van Nuys woman sends cards that she gets at no charge by contributing to the Sierra Club to her “least-liked” friends.

Saks offers card etiquette advice when asked, although Vecchio said there really aren’t any rules when it comes to today’s cards. “We always suggest you sign the cards, even if you have them imprinted, because it shows you took the time,” Vecchio said.

Vecchio doesn’t like the typed Christmas letters that some people send with their cards. “A greeting card is just to say you care, and not to give a life rundown,” he said.

But to many, the Christmas letter is an important way of communicating family events and passages. Bernstein of Cal State Northridge sees the Christmas letter as an expression of the “desire to fulfill Andy Warhol’s statement that we’ll all be famous for 15 minutes, to feel important.”

Corky and Tom Miller of Woodland Hills, both in their 60s, send out an annual multipage combination of photos and narrative to 200 people. “Sometimes we get started too late, so we just send it out on an Easter letterhead,” Corky said.

“And I don’t know that we enjoy (sending out the letter),” Corky said. “Tom says that I’m too wordy, and I like to have a theme that has something to do with Christ and Christmas.”

Christmas cards have become a valued form of communication. Art professor Bernstein says: “If Rembrandt were alive today, he wouldn’t be painting in oil. His art, his cards, would reflect our technology.”