George H. W. Bush liked to send Christmas cards. By the mid-1970s, the recipient list was already at 4,000 to 5,000 names, with circulation peaking at approximately 30,000 by the time Bush was vice president. What? You never got one?
There were the usual suspects, of course: friends, neighbours and Members of Congress. But really it extended to anyone the bloke ever brushed past at a Republican Governors Association dinner on his way to the bathroom. As Richard Ben Cramer put it in his seminal book on the 1988 US presidential election, What It Takes, Bush had a lot of “friends”.
And I know what you’re thinking. No one has 30,000 friends. These are, surely, the actions of a man assiduously building coalitions and maintaining relationships for political advantage? Not so, says Cramer. He was “100% genuine.” Bush simply accumulated friends like you or I might those Gü dessert ramekins.
And this meant the Bush family Christmas card operation was something of a year-round affair. Envelopes addressed in the spring, stamps affixed in the summer. Barbara was in charge, naturally. But volunteers would work round the clock to get it done in time.
To be clear, this is not an activity I have any interest in devoting myself to or recommending others do the same. Nevertheless, I do indulge in a micro, weirder version: I like to write the occasional fan letter.
Dear Slim,
It seems a bit twee. Needy. Low-key deranged behaviour, further evidence of your ongoing downward spiral from upstanding-member-of-society-who-qualifies-as-a-countersigner-on-UK-passport-applications-and-other-legal-documents to Stan, the obsessive super fan in the eponymous song by Eminem.
And sure, there’s a way to be a creep about it but it’s fairly easy to avoid. For instance, don’t request a lock of a person’s hair, suggest an alternative ending or, if you’re a man and the author/artist is a woman, raise the prospect of sex in return for your kindness.
But a simple note saying how much you enjoyed a thing and perhaps why it was meaningful to you? Why would you want to keep that to yourself?