I like to send out Christmas cards each year. I don’t do anything fancy – a budget card, a nice one-page family update letter, and two pictures of the kids (the professional photo and the red-bordered pic I posted here). I put a fair amount of time into it, and it costs a bit of money – probaly $40 for stamps, pictures, cards and supplies. Not a huge amount of time and money, but still.
I do it because I like to let people know what we’re up to and to send them updated pics of the kids. I don’t expect everyone to send me a card in return, but it so happens that most of the people DO send me cards too. (I love getting their cards.)
Until the past two years, that is. For some reason, last year and especially this year I haven’t gotten cards from a lot of the people who have sent cards for years. Here are a few that skipped me this year:
My aunt! (Didn’t get one from her last year either, though Mom did)
Four college friends (all sent cards until last year)
Friend I worked with in bookstore for four years
One long-time friend (who lived in town) sent a card but said she had moved to Houston two weeks earlier!
Sister-in-law (granted, she just moved, but still)
Anyone else find they’re getting fewer and fewer cards from people? Or, on the flip side of the coin, have you trimmed your card list down or even quit sending out cards altogether? Why?
I not only didn’t get as many cards this year as in years past, I discovered a disturbing new trend among my friends with kids. Used to be that the photo-of-the-kids card had a handwritten salutation or signature. (You know, like, “Enjoy your holiday, Gal!”) This year, it seems everyone let the printer do all the work. Made me a little sad.
This year for the first time we eliminated most of the kids in my kids’ classes, many of whom have never sent cards to us in the six years we’ve sent cards to everyone in both grades. It just got to be too much — too much work, too much money, too much recordkeeping. It used to mean a lot more to me when my kids were so small and changing so drastically every year, but by now we know who never sends cards to us, and I was too busy this year to be bothered. As it was, our cards didn’t go out until just before New Year’s Eve anyway.
The years vary. It’s funny how some years you get cards from people you never expected to….like you’ve sent them cards for years and then maybe finally gave up then all of a sudden out of the blue you get one from them. Since I’ve made several “online” friends my xmas card receiving has gone up since I’ve made so many friends from all over. I love getting cards too…..Some years I go to more trouble in sending them out than others. The xmas I was pregnant I MADE all my xmas cards…not that get expensive but I loved doing it and gave me something to do when I could not sleep.
A number of friends that have always sent cards, did not do so this year. I don’t know what the reason is, but it did have me thinking of not sending card next year. I mainly send cards to friends and family that are out of state, and I still did this year. But, next?
Well, I’m sorry ot hear that others are getting fewer and fewer cards too, but I guess I’m glad I’m not the only one!
Bakinbit – you MADE your own cards? Wow!
feefifoto – I can’t believe you sent cards to all of your kids’ classmates for six years! We send a small gift for everyone for the holiday party (this year it was a box of crayons – $.20 before school started!) but that’s enough effort for me.
I send out 40 each year. I go into it knowing that I’m only going to get half in return. No biggy. I used to send regular cards in the past, but if I had to do it now, I wouldn’t.
I prefer receiving photocards and I prefer sending photocards – no muss, no fuss. I just clip the photo after the holidays and I put them in acrylic frames on my fridge. The regular cards get tossed. I love seeing my friends’ kids growing up through the years.
I don’t handwrite a thing. Heck, I even used mail merged address labels. If it was any harder than that, I wouldn’t do it at all.
This year I sent about 50 cards and got back about 40. I haven’t kept track but it seemed like approx. the same amount as previous years. I send photocards and only put a handwritten greeting on about 5, to family out of state. The rest just got the printed message. It was all I had time for in order to get them out before Christmas, but I admit I felt like I’d cheated by doing it that way. I did handwrite the envelopes.
I tried.. I really did. I even bought 2 packs of cards and had one left over from last year. I also went so far as to take them to work with me and possible do them during a lunch break. Now, the only reason one of those boxes is open is cause JD got to one of them and wanted to read it. Oh well… theres always next year. At least I have the cards already!!
We always get ready to send out cards… we have even made it to the Adressing the Card stage and never get them out. But what I usually do is call my family and friend and wish them a Merry Christmas. It helps that they don’t like to talk long and I have alot of cell phone minutes… that works better for me than the Post Office Shuffle….
I forgot that I needed to add my SISTER to the list!! Thanks for the reminder, btwinny. 🙂
Oh, so you got a card from First? I only got them from you and Junior! Perhaps First and Btwinny don’t have our new address…….
OK, maybe I need to add my OTHER sister to the list too … I was going from memory and thought I had cards from each of them. (But we’ll give firsttwin a pass today.)
We found ourselves sending out updated photos of the Kids more and more a couple of years back, so we decided to combine the two and so now we dress the children up in some Christmas scene and make a card from it. The children think it is great (An opinion they may grow to regret) and it is a bit more fun than the generic Christmas cards that we seem to get in shops.
With the new baby coming soon it will give us the opportunity to do the Nativity scene again.
Maybe it’s because I cut out all the “obligatory” cards — you know, coworkers, the dentist, etc. But I truly do ENJOY the whole card thing. Choosing the card (usually from the American Humane Assn.), buying the holiday and religious postage stamps, writing the “Dear So-and-so” and “Happy Holidays to Fido, too!” kinda salutations and closes. Of course, I’m a writer by trade so coming up with something to say comes naturally to me. Still, we’re usually talking about less than 20 words. If I felt that wishing my friends and family a happy holiday season in 20 words or less was too much work to bother with, it would make me very sad.
Thanks for the pass – I didn’t realize this thread was still going. Let me tell you about this year’s card incident. (All my stories start with ‘there was an incident…’)
Got all the cards together early. Wrote them out, signed, sealed and addressed by December 1st. Let me say I had some really cool cards! Then found about five sheets of stamps. Some were hershey kiss stamps, some were everglades, some were super heroes, etc.. I had lots of stamps. Only to realize after putting them on that they were .39 cent stamps. So, we dinked around for awhile…”oh, they’ll get out in in time! And on Friday the 21st I drove around to a couple places that I THOUGHT would sell .02 cent stamps, but no luck. (I know, try a Post Office. – I was running out of time and I don’t live near one.) So then I had to go to Mt. PLeasant for the weekend, and I had to pack and get ready. The cards just didn’t get out. Although, I will admit, 3 lucky winners found themselves with a .42 cent stamp. Aunt Barb & Uncle Paul, M’s ex Step-Grandma (Looong story) and a friends mother.
So, I apologize (But wasn’t it a great story?) Now that we’ve had this ‘do better’ talk, I will do better next year. Remind me to get good stamps!!