Does anyone still send Christmas cards?

I remember when my parents and their friends sent Christmas cards, every year without fail. There were photos and the traditional holiday letter with news of the past year. I have always sent cards, albeit fewer every year. Even with email and texting, it is nice to get a traditional Christmas card in the mail. I, especially, like the homemade kind. I friend does original watercolor cards for everyone, which I keep as 'desk art'. Do you send out cards?

I started sending out cards during COVID, OP. My parents were prolific Christmas card senders and we always received several dozen.

I think it's a nice tradition to keep alive.

I'm looking to buy nice cards this year:

Christmas cards are awesome. I like buying them, sending them (always signed, not preprinted), and receiving them.

That said, 10 or 15 years ago I probably sent and received 60 or 70 each holiday. Now it's maybe a dozen, if that.

I sent out about 80 holiday cards during the first winter of COVID - it was a lot of fun and I ended up getting a lot of cards in return, so I did it last winter as well. It’s a fun project for the winter.

Yes I do. Not as many as I used to but I like to send them to family and close friends and my doctors (a thank you).

My mother used to design and hand paint about 500 Christmas cards for my steel executive father to send out every year, and we’d get hundreds in return. In turn, I did the same thing for several years, until, like her, it got too laborious.

Finally, for the past 35 years or so, I do a new painting, print them with an inscription I’ve written, and send them out. But the number I send has dwindled down to about 80, and every year, some are returned, stamped as undeliverable, for various reasons. Over time, people just disappear from your life.

But I still keep copies of all those cards, including my mother’s.

I stopped when I realized the people I was sending them to were responding with cards individually purchased from card shops, meaning they'd stopped the practice of sending out cards themselves.

No. Postage has gotten outrageous. Everyone sends ecards, if they send any at all. The past couple of years we've sent out about 15 cards, and got maybe 5 in return. I'm done with the aggravation and cost for something that goes in the trash after a few days.

My mother's side of the family are a bunch of nasty old bastards, and they made it clear back in the 1980s when I was a child that they would not send cards for any occasion, nor tolerate anyone sending cards to them. An aunt has recently become quite religious, and in the last few years has taken to sending me happy birthday emails, and seems somewhat put out that I do not return the favor. However, I remember being a kid and being told to never send her "junk" for her birthday again, after sending her a handmade birthday card one year, so no junk it is.

I still like to send cards. And I like to write a personal note in each card. We don’t always get to see our friends and so this is a nice reconnect and acknowledgment have friendships

[quote] were responding with cards individually purchased from card shops, meaning they'd stopped the practice of sending out cards themselves

What does this mean?

R10, he means that the cards he received back weren't from a box of cards purchased by someone who sent out a bunch of cards every year, but a single, individual card that they bought just for him, to reciprocate for the card he'd sent.

I get a card from my car dealership. That’s about it. I notice my folks still get about 15 or so every Christmas. They used to get about 50+. I think it’s a dying tradition kept up mostly by older people.

Thanks, R11. That wouldn't make me stop sending them, though. I send about 15 every year and get maybe the same number; it varies, and some people send them late and reclassify them as New Year's cards (!). Most are mass printed cards with pictures of vacations etc.

No. Only those eldergay DLers who spend their days haunting the aisles of the Dollar Store looking for discounted pound cake and xmas cards, the cheap bitches.

We send out Christmas or Happy New Years cards every other year or so. It’s nice to think about your old friends and an excuse for them to reach out, even if they haven’t sent a card. I think everyone appreciates a card even if they throw it away.

[quote] Only those eldergay DLers who spend their days haunting the aisles of the Dollar Store looking for discounted pound cake and xmas cards, the cheap bitches

How very dare you! I rather haunt the sale tables of museum gift shops in early January for my holiday-card-sending needs.

For discounted pound cake it's TJ Maxx.

I'm mailing mine today, OP!

I have a few left from my mother who passed in 2010. Never got around to throwing them out, I guess, and now I am glad I didn't.

I am glad I kept a few and can now enjoy and appreciate seeing her handwriting once again.

I remember my mother sitting at the table signing and addressing perhaps 100 cards. It was such a tradition then. For years I sorta kept it up sending out around 40, then over the years, 30, etc. This year it was 16. Some you aren't in contact with for years, why send a card. As you age sadly many die. If I get a card from someone to whom I did send a card I immediately place one in the mail. It's largely an old person practice.

^ to whom I did not send a card

R19, I have the same memory. Was the Boston Pops Christmas Party album on the stereo at your house too?

I send out a few, all to cousins I never see or otherwise talk to. I just want them to know I'm still alive make sure they are, too.

I used to send out many more but always only to family ... it's just that most of the family I used to send cards to were older than I and have now gone to that great Hallmark store in the sky. My friends have never been card-sending people, so I never sent them a card, either, but I do text, call or email around the holidays.

Do people who don't send cards send an email or text to friends to say Merry Christmas instead? It seems so odd not to mark the holiday, unless you know the people in question don't celebrate Christmas.

I send out about 100 to 125 every year and get back 80 or so. I make the Christmas cards I receive into a garland and hang it from my staircase banner every year

Send cards to people I don't see during the year. My mother had a rule. "Sending cards before December 15th is pushy. Looks like you're expecting one back."

[quote] I make the Christmas cards I receive into a garland and hang it from my staircase banner every year

That brought back a childhood memory, r22.

Ingeniously, our parents occupied our little minds with that fun chore.

Red and green colored slim ribbons and a shiny, silver metal hand paper punch, the kind that would leave a perfect circle to string the ribbon through did the trick.

Then clear tape, aided by a hook on the wall to hold them.

Things seemed so uncomplicated back then...

Most cards seem to have photographs on them now. It’s kind of nice.

That’s a really nice memory, R24! Thanks for sharing xo

All the Xmas cards I get are from friends with kids. They print cards with their pics

Cards are going to the way of the dinosaur. The only people still participating in this practice are the elderly who refuse to learn how to use social media. They are trapped in a time warp and are dying off. Even Hallmark stores have cut way back on their selections of individual and boxed Christmas cards. All the leftovers that don't sell on clearance are thrown away. That's a lot of wasted trees. This is one practice I'll be happy to see completely in the past.

Every year. We take a Christmas photo (amateur, on a phone) get them printed with mpix.

Good quality (better than Walgreens, which we did before) and send them out with a small note written on them depending on the design.

Need to think of what we want to do this year!

I'm pretty sure R28 doesn't need to worry about "waiting" for the practice to end. Doubtful they have ever been the recipient of a card from someone who actually knew them.

This was always a huge project for my mother who loved sending cards. She would start at the end of November and finish up in early December. That was a different era. I estimate there were about 150 people on her list. She often wrote notes — she had beautiful handwriting — to people she rarely saw, which is why it took so long to get them all finished. I was recruited to seal the envelopes and affix the stamps.

I stopped sending cards about 20 years ago.

I have sent them every year for the past 10 years or so - i am 34. I buy vintage, new-old-stock cards on eBay. I look for cards that are unique - gold foil, deeply embossed, hand cut, etc. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

I send about 30 a year. The list shifts, some old contacts drop off, new friends come on. I get perhaps 4 mailed to me in return, but I don’t care. Everyone who receives my card texts or calls with effusive thanks. People aren’t used to getting personal mail. It’s a novelty.

I send cards for Xmas and Mother’s Day to my ex-boyfriend’s Mom. She LOVES it and it drives him insane.

baby boomers and gen x still probably do

[quote]I send cards for Xmas and Mother’s Day to my ex-boyfriend’s Mom. She LOVES it and it drives him insane.

LOL I love you r33

I can remember a time when sending Christmas cards was so popular, there were TWO daily mail deliveries in my town just so the post office could keep up with the volume.

And, the post office wanted senders to band their cards by In Town, Out of Town and Out of State.

What about the Christmas letter folded up inside the card? Does anyone still get those? You know, a breezy “dear friends” summary of the sender’s year, amplifying their achievements (especially those of their children) and airbrushing their tragedies and failures, all of it peppered with weak little jokes.

Here in the UK these letters used to be more common, but they have long been so widely ridiculed by everyone that few people would dare to do it anymore. However, I do have one set of friends (gay male couple, 40s) who inexplicably persist in sending out such a letter every year, without irony. I find it perplexing, because in other respects they are fully part of the modern age. Their annual Christmas letter makes me wince and shriek with second-hand embarrassment.

r37 my parents (in their 70s) still have friends (in their 70s, mostly) who still send those letters. One always contains the most embarrassing of grammatical errors, things that Microsoft Word would easily catch. It always amuses me.

I grew up in the Dullsville suburbs, where every year all the local dull suburban families would display all the Christmas cards they received in the living room, and whoever had the most cards "won" in the eternal competition that was life in a middle-class suburb.

I think I was seven or eight years old, when I decided that I would never waste my time on sending the things when I grew up. And I haven't.

R37, it's the same in the US. The popularity of such impersonal letters has declined, and as R38 says, it's mostly older people who do it. I have one set of cousins in their 70s who send such a letter every year and have for decades. These days, it's pretty sad, full of mentions of their health problems and the deaths of people who are total strangers to most recipients.

Today, Instagram has taken the place of bragging, overly bright and positive Christmas letters to 100 of your family and friends. Now, you can brag every day to thousands!

[quote] The only people still participating in this practice are the elderly who refuse to learn how to use social media.

Totally untrue. Fraus, mommies, and divorced fathers send me Christmas cards with pictures of their kids and travels, as do gay couples. All of them are adept at publicizing their lives on social media, too.

My mother (to whom social media are completely alien) sends out the booklet-length yearly report including pictures of the grandchildren, family activities, etc. Many of her coevals also do this; I get some of them. These reports, though, also come with a few handwritten sentences customized to the recipient.

I used to send out 80 and get about 70. Last year I only got about 50 so I just ordered 50 this year. My partner scans the card and emails to his international work colleagues.

Nope. Well, I do send one to my mom who's in her 80s.

Christmas cards are terrible for the environment. All that paper, simply to be thrown away in a few weeks.

R44, you don't cherish the Christmas cards you receive and paste them into albums, to be dated, shelved in order, and lovingly perused year after year?

I send out maybe 10 or less cards a year and most are to older people.

I loathe the Christmas Letter. I find it so self-indulgent. Haven’t received one in some time, thankfully.

I enjoy the unique photo cards (or at least, don’t deride them) because it’s often cute and reminds me of people I don’t really see all too often. Plus I’m biased because that’s what we do.

But a form letter? Blech. Won’t read.

I think only Olds still send Christmas letters these days

My Millennial relatives with kids send photo cards, sometimes with a brief "update" on the back

Christmas card sending is definitely a frau thing to do. So no OP, I do not.

I send more than I receive. Postage costs are leading to people cutting down. And most younger people are oblivious to authenticity and actual communication in any form.

My brother’s wife still does the Xmas Letter. They live in Europe and our side of the family in the US never gets to see them so it’d be nice to get some fun pics and stories about the kids. Nope, just poorly written drivel about vacations full of place names and dates. Basically, she sends an overview of their annual travel itineraries inside an ugly card.

I wonder how my nephews are doing. I think they’re both teenagers now. I know that they were in Barcelona from April 14 through April 17 but beyond that is a mystery.

I send and receive two or three a year now; three decades ago, I would need to buy three boxes of cards to send. It used to be my "lifeline" to distantly-related and distantly-located kin; and so once a year I would get updated on what remote cousins etc. had married, had children, died, had some sort of success, etc., which actually really would be interesting for the couple of minutes it took to read their few sentences on the cards.

When email came along, people stopped cherishing these written annual notes--not that they replaced it during the yuletide with with email messages, but rather that communications of personal news had become an everyday occurrence between closer friends and relatives such that the onset of the holiday season didn't trigger a special "Oh, it's time to write to great-aunt Opal" urge anymore in most people, and so the tradition fell apart, and of course the ones who had formerly done it began to die off year by year. In my experience, loss of this tradition was the final blow to--whatever one might think of it--the cohesiveness of extended kinship.

I found a new box of cards amongst the decorations as I was putting up the tree this year. I decided to send cards to my nieces and nephews, who are all under 16 years old. The younger ones especially will get a kick out of it, I think.

I don’t think I’ve sent them myself since the end of the 20th century. That said my partner has a card made up with a picture of our dog in a Christmas setting every year and sends it out to people we know. It’s cringey to me, but he likes to do it. I love my dog, but he’s old now so it’s kind of depressing seeing him age year to year and knowing one year not too long from now there won’t be a card with him on it.

One thing I'll say about sending/receiving Christmas cards: it makes checking the mailbox during December a delight. Nearly every day I receive a card, or cards, often from someone I haven't heard from since the previous December. I know I'll sound like a MARY!!! but it really is a wonderful holiday tradition.

[quote] I stopped when I realized the people I was sending them to were responding with cards individually purchased from card shops, meaning they'd stopped the practice of sending out cards themselves.

Huh?

[quote] I used to send out 80 and get about 70. Last year I only got about 50 so I just ordered 50 this year. My partner scans the card and emails to his international work colleagues.

What?

I usually send them, but haven’t gotten them done this year. It may be too late at this point.

Yes, I do. This year I'm sending about 30 cards. I get very few cards in return any more, but I still can't break the habit of sending them.

I quit once Mommie Dearest died.

R62 if you’re like me, I’m more of the cheerful giver type. I’m a former greeting card industry person so sending cards will always be a part of me.

Last year was the first time in a few years that I did Christmas cards, but my partner and I had gotten engaged in September, and I wanted to share a photo. I designed cards on Minted and had matching envelopes printed up that were really nicely done. Our town has Christmas cachets at the post office, sort of Christmas stamps or postmarks really, and we took them there to be sent. They were a little pricey, but I had fun doing it again, I think we sent out close to 50. This year, I haven't even gotten around to thinking about designing a new one, and I think it will be maybe an every-other-year tradition.