It’s Black Friday and while you need to get out to walk off the turkey, sweet potato, pumpkin pie orgy, the idea of getting anywhere near a shopping mall or neighborhood store is nauseating. Yet you need to make a dent in your holiday list.
Here’s an idea for a cheapish, splurg-y custom gift for the narcissist in your life. (Not you honey.) How about something more specific, more concrete, more tacky than a monogrammed scarf or hanky?
Go no further than personalized postage stamps. You submit a pic and—ta da!—real stamps featuring the image arrive at your door in about a week.
The perfect present for the hyper-attentive new mama (baby pic stamps), your dreamy lover (pic of you two together), or your self-obsessed teenage daughter (pic of herself).
Stamps? Who actually writes a letter or even mails a bill with email and online banking you’re thinking? Well, it got us thinking about stamps as a vestige of another time. A slower time. A more peaceful time. A time when a letter was an event, a rare treasure, and the stamp an emblem of its travel. A time before people lined up at 4AM to buy a toaster oven. Besides, have you ever written a letter to your sweetie and sent it off with just a gentle hint of your perfume sprayed on it? Pretty romantic, right? Totally lost in our electronic era.
Make it a point to write a letter a week. Think of using a stamp as the communication equivalent of the slow food movement. A cheap way to nurture relationships and to savor the moment.
2 comments
Maggie May says:
Nov 28, 2009
I wrote two letters today, but had to use the really sad “holiday” stamps from the USPS vending machine – they are super thin and plastic-y. Not handwritten noteworthy.
baise niquer says:
Jan 4, 2010
Hi from mexico, good review. I should come back more often to see what’s new.