Christmas Cards

[poliphilo]

We're not sending Christmas cards this year. Ailz says it's because she wants to give the money we'll save to a deserving charity. I say it's because I just don't want to.

Christmas cards belong to an age before there were Facebook and Twitter- and the telephone- and all those other new-fangled ways we have of keeping in touch. The sending of cards has become a socially-enforced ritual. There's very little joy in it.

Ailz's mother says we should at least send cards to family. I say family- the people with whom we're most frequently in touch- are the last people we should bother with.

Comments

[mummm.livejournal.com]

I must say that I disagree completely, but I guess that's okay... right?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Of course. :)

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I love to send cards... love it. But I won't do it unless I have the time to paint my own and compose the poem on the inside. Sending storebought cards gives me no pleasure.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

What you're doing is completely different. You're not sending cards, you're sending gifts.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I had not thought of it that way. Hmm!

[zoe-1418.livejournal.com]

I disagree but not completely. (How's that for showing my Anglicanism? ;-D)

A lot of the people I know who do send cards are not on FB, Twitter, etc. -- or even using computers, some of them -- folks my parents' age. My aged parents love to get cards in the mail. BUT -- and here's where I think I agree -- if there's nothing written in the card except the signature of the people sending it (sometimes pre-printed!), it makes me sad. Might as well be a Facebook "poke." Cards with meaningful notes -- particularly if they're beautiful cards -- are very nice.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

"WRitten" is the word that matters most here. I REALLY don't like those newsletters that tell you everything but the bathroom habits of the people who sent them. But I like getting cards, very much. Still.

And I haven't sent mine yet.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There was a well-known English journalist who produced an anthology of those Christmas newsletters. I'll bet that got him crossed off a lot of lists.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A personal note makes all the difference. Then it's not so much a card as a letter.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I like to receive cards, especially ones with notes in them. We've pared way back on our list -- about 70 people. For an older couple with far-flung family and a number of dear friends picked up over the decades, that's not an unreasonable number.

I've automated the parts of it that are drudgery -- I keep the address list in a spreadsheet. That leaves more time for writing notes.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You take the writing of cards a lot more seriously than I have ever done. I agree it makes a world of difference if the card contains a personal note.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Roy was at one time working in an industry in which sending large quantities of preprinted cards was de riguer, and I got in the spreadsheet habit. Now I also track who gets my annual crocheted snowflake. [Edit: that's so I know when I can stop making the damn things.]

[silverhawkdruid.livejournal.com]

I'm down to close family and close friends on my list, because I don't see the point in exchanging umpteen cards with people you never hear from outside of Christmas. If I can make the cards myself, I do, but this year I didn't have time to cross stitch them so I opted for cards sold by our local hospice. Helps a good cause, and a short note in each card tells friends and family that we are thinking of them.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We've been cutting down and cutting down until there's nothing left to trim.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I hate it! My husband will write most of them this year. The exception I make is to my former PhD supervisor, who gets cross if I don't send him a card with a letter saying what I've been up to all year. LOL I should get him to join LJ!

Everyone else can go hang. If like them, I will get a present to them or wish them Merry Christmas personally over a drink.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Phew- at last someone who agrees with me! :)

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about sending cards to the people we are most frequently in touch with. I sent Christmas cards last year, and I'm planning to send them this year--but for most of my life, I haven't sent them.

In other news, I think you might find this interesting: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1957

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's interesting.

Few writers continue to publish into their eighties. When they do there's almost always a marked decline in quality.
Has any very old writer written a masterpiece? I certainly can't think of one.