New Rule

Taken in a vacuum, I don't mind if people don't send me a birthday card. I tend not to notice the absence of something anyway.

Taken in a vacuum, I guess I don't mind if people send me xmas cards. I'm not religious or anything, but I can accept that some people have this bizarre need to send a generic greeting to everyone they know for some weird reason.

The problem is when people - like family and friends, real people with whom I have a greeting card relationship - send me a xmas card from their generic "OMG must send a card to everyone I know!" list, and pretend that's suitable acknowledgement of my birthday. I'm not even xian! Just because you sent me a generic card for some holiday near my birthday doesn't mean you've acknowledged my birthday! It makes me feel like you don't care at all about me as an individual, and instead value me simple because I make your list of "People I know" one name longer. I'd rather get nothing at all than a xmas card but no birthday card. If you choose not to acknowledge me at all, that's fine, but I'm sick of being given greetings for a religious thing I don't even celebrate and expected to take that as greetings for my birthday!

Therefore, I am introducing a new rule: If you send me a xmas card and expect it to count as birthday greetings, for your birthday you are getting a greeting card for some religious holiday in a religion to which you don't subscribe, with nary a Happy Birthday comment added.