Re-Thinking Christmas Cards

For the past twenty years I have been the one to send a Christmas card to everyone I know. They have included a carefully worded synopsis of our past year plus a glowing family picture. If someone did not get the letter or the picture they certainly got the Hallmark card that I rushed out on December 26th of the previous year to buy at half price.

After over a year on Facebook, I have seen pictures of about 50 percent of my former recipients as they have mine. They not only know of every event of our prior year, but they pretty much know how we spent each day. The 50 percent not included in this group are very elderly, have refused to be on FB or I haven't found them yet.

I'm thinking I spend about $300 a year on the whole Christmas card thing. My cards go to family, extended family, current friends, old friends, and past and present co-workers. I even send cards to people I've never met such as my husband's co-workers. The letters and pictures in themselves used to consist of creating the original of the letter and taking it to a copy place to be printed on the carefully selected Christmas paper. The pictures were an arduous process of using a whole roll of film, developing it and hoping one of them would be the perfect one which meant another trip to the drugstore to have copies made.

Of course today, with my computer, digital camera and laser printer I can do all this at home. We know how much printer ink costs so I am not saving any money but feel that they are much more creative. Then there are the hours addressing the envelopes and placing the stamps on each one. In the past few years I have broken down and used address labels so my hands could be used to write a personal message. It is now to the point where it costs almost a dollar to put stamps on two envelopes.

For the past twenty years my Christmas card list has consisted of 150 or more. About eighty percent of the pictures have been of my children with my husband and I thrown in a few of these years. The letters have consisted of stories of their activities. I pride myself in just sending the Hallmark to those who had never met them.

I have even kept a photo album of each of these pictures. I too, am so anal that I have kept the pictures from friends who like me send one out every year. I do throw out all current Christmas cards before the new year. I am not a clutterer.

Fact is, I have always loved the whole Christmas card process. I used to be the first one to send them out to make sure everyone felt obligated to send us one as well. Now the cards go out much later in the month of December as we/I have become a permanent fixture on everyone's Christmas card list. You send them and they will come back to you.

Now as some of the people I once eagerly awaited the yearly contact are my friends on Facebook and, again, I sometimes know what they had for dinner on any given day, the joy of their vacations and the kids who I once couldn't pick out in a crowd are images are embedded in my mind.

Trying to sort through if this year I should cut my Christmas card list in half, have more money for shopping and wonder if I will miss them. The kids are adult professionals and one is even married. Funny thing is I surely think I would.