I was at a friend’s house the other day, and I noticed that she had multiple Christmas cards on the wall from the same family. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the cards were from different years, spanning all the way back to 2006. When I asked her about this, she said that she keeps the Christmas cards to watch her friends grow older.

Oh boy. I, too, like to watch my friends grow older, but I do it with these novel things I call eyes and a memory, not a hoarded collection of holiday cards.

I toss out all my Christmas cards on January 6th, the twelfth day of Christmas. I don’t keep them for years and years, pulling them out of some garage bin every December to reminisce about Christmases of yore. Is this nuts? Am I just not being empathetic or sentimental enough to understand this phenomenon?