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

[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.