Customs: In the Cards

In their several ways, from their several stations, and to a multiplicity of mailing lists, the nation’s famous and its merely notorious dealt with that common joy-become-chore of the season: choosing and dispatching a Christmas card.

Boston’s Richard Cardinal Gushing sent the biggest, a 22-in. by 35-in. reproduction of a portrait of Pope John XXIII by Paris’ Bernard Buffet; Theologian Paul Tillich the longest, a two-page personal letter. Postmaster General John Gronouski got his 2,000 cards out early, remembered to zip-code each and every one. Georgia’s Governor Carl Sanders, who had bucked voter opinion to back Johnson, discovered too late that the etching of the Governor’s mansion had been tampered with—the name Goldwater was scratched in amongst branches of an overhanging tree.

On Observatory Hill. Barbra Streisand, Doris Day and George Burns stuck to traditional toys, trees and reindeer, avoided writer’s cramp by having their signatures engraved within. Playwright Edward Albee, who selected a 16th century woodcut, signed his cards by hand, as did New York Herald Tribune Publisher John H. Whitney, Newsman Chet Huntley and Actress Joan Crawford. Hedda Hopper was even more personal about it all, sent cards bearing her own portrait. Mother Jolie Gabor sent photographs of herself and her daughters, included a lengthy message: “Come and have a glass of champagne with me at my fabulous pearl salon . . . my charming girls will be more than happy to give you ideas on how to get or give a glamorous Christmas present from $5 to $5,000.”

The Home was a favorite motif, whether it was a photograph of Chief of Naval Operations Admiral David L. McDonald’s official residence on Observatory Hill, or a black and white print of a watercolor featuring two oak trees, two girls and two dogs, of the Johnson place on Pennsylvania Avenue.

In the Barn. But the most popular theme by far was the Family. Jerry Lewis bundled his wife and six sons into bright red sweaters; the Robert Kennedys dressed their eight in nightgowns and photographed the assembly in the barn. Debbie Reynolds and group were backed by Santa, Jimmy Stewart and children by a Sun Valley snow scene. Walt Disney didn’t stop at one generation, issued an eight-page, red-suede and gold-tasseled folio bearing 17 pictures of “Grandma and Grandpa Lilly and Walt” (aged, respectively, four and eight when photographed), plus children and grandchildren.

Versatile Peter Ustinov sent a hand-drawn cartoon of his family, Director Elia Kazan a hard-cover copy of his late wife’s poem in honor of President Kennedy, and Burl Ives went so far as to enclose with his card a sermon by the Dean of Duke University Chapel, entitled “Bethlehem and Bedlam.” But along with all the frankincense and myrrh was an ever increasing band of Scrooges—Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley and Earl Warren among them —who continued to cry humbug to the greeting game and sent no cards at all.