Back in the mid 1980s sure, maybe a hundred between my not-yet-wife and I. Along about 1995 we abruptly stopped sending one year due to … major stuff in December. Still got our usual flood of cards back. Next year we were some combo of lazy & embarrassed about last year and fillibustered until it was too late. Repeat the next year, then just “Aw screw it!”. Haven’t sent any since. Christmas cards are out of sight, out of mind.
I still get 2 or 3 cards. Almost entirely from current friends who have children and are sending us the annual picture of how much their kids have grown! Or, considering where my contemporaries are in life, the annual picture of who’s their kids’ new spouses this year with the ever burgeoning collection of grandkids and the occasional great grandkid.
Other than SDMB I’m not on social media, so all those friends, coworkers, and relatives from the Christmas cards era are either on occasional email, or simply gone from my/our life. Many to the Great Beyond.
Our parents used to send (and receive) about 100 cards (1950’s-60’s). Our job was to lick the stamps and put them on the envelopes. The incoming cards would cover the side of our staircase leading upstairs.
I send out collage picture cards that I create on Walmart’s website. I get 60 for about $26. I include pics of all the grandkids from some fun thing (s) we did in the past year, a pic of me and my husband always with the dogs (sadly no dogs this year ) and my daughter and her BF. I usually send out all 60 and probably get close to that many cards in return. I have never done the letter. We don’t have that much excitement during the year to report.
I enjoy doing it, it’s part of the Christmas festivities. I also enjoy getting cards from others. Especially picture cards. I tape them on a closet door as they are received.
Apparently my mom has gotten positive feedback from people who like her detailed restatement of the year’s events, with updates on literally every child and grandchild. So while you might not be interesting, apparently my mom actually is.
And my mom always has my siblings and I review our sections and edit them however we wish, so the “news is ours to share or not” issue has never been a problem. Essentially she’s giving use each a chance to include our own mini-letters inside hers without us each spending our own stamps - and without us having to come up with most of the words ourselves either. (This year the only change I made was to fix a typo.)
My mom has a large cardboard christmas tree on her wall that seems designed to hold and display cards. The thing may be older than I am. It still seems to get pretty much filled every year. (I imagine when it stops getting filled it’ll start to get pretty depressing - everybody’ll have died!)
Myself, I get them, read them, and then eventually they get put back in their envelopes and go in the box where I put all mementos that I may or may not decide to look at when I’m an old(er) person and develop an interest in basking in the past.
I like sending out Christmas Cards. Its just a quick note to let folks you still think about them. I’m 53. A lot of folks now maintain connection via Facebook, so its not quite so impactful, but its still nice.
Well stated. We used to receive these insipid letters annually from people before Facebook replaced them, for the most part, as people’s method for getting attention and bragging about their wonderful, well-adjusted children, their vacation in Hawaii, and how cute their new dog is. My wife sent these as well but stopped maybe 10-15 years ago, probably in no small part because of my mocking so many of the incoming ones.
We still get cards from people we have not seen in years, and in some cases a decade or more - people we otherwise have no interaction with. What’s the point?
I’m 51. When my kid was little, we always sent cards out to everyone in the family. Over the past 10 years, I’ve been sporadic. I’ll send to everyone one year, nothing the next, a couple the next. I don’t particularly care. After last Xmas, my kid went clearance shopping and bought me cards to mail this year.
They’re still in the bin with all the blank cards and fancy stationary.
She just turned 27. She proudly noted all 80(!!) cards have been addressed and stamped, ready to go in the mail tomorrow. I joked about it to a coworker, also 27, who asked why I thought it was funny. She mailed hers out last Friday.
We send them, and have for years. We use an online design service to make our own cards, highlighting family photos, with a short message. When we were in the U.S., we used Shutterfly; now that we’re in Europe we use a local equivalent.
My wife and I are just north of 50. We have a list of probably 100 that we use every year, adding and trimming a few in each cycle.
We considered stopping when we made the move to Europe, but then we thought, how often do people in the U.S. get physical mail from here? So we have the printed cards delivered to us, and we stuff, label, and stamp them by hand, and drop them in a post box. It would be easier to upload the mailing list directly to Shutterfly and have them generate the mail locally on our behalf, but we think at least some of our recipients appreciate getting an actual envelope that was physically handled in Europe as part of the process.
I’m lazy, and I’m Jewish, so I don’t send cards. (We did, twice, but it’s a lot of work and we gave up.) But I get about a dozen cards. I enjoy them. I probably enjoy those with a one page letter more than those with a three page letter, but I like hearing about my friends vacation, new grandchildren, child’s new job, etc. Most of the cards I get these days are photos, and I like the photos.
Finished signing/addressing the cards yesterday. Discussed w/ my wife - next year we’ll probably cull the list, dropping folk we haven’t received cards from or otherwise interacted w/ for years. Will likely keep all of the younger generation on for a while yet.
ISTM there’s an era in your life when quite a lot happens every year. And other eras in your life where very little happens. My wife & I’s transition from one to the other is what killed our outgoing newsletter and a year or two later our entire Xmas card effort.
And truthfully, some people lead pretty action-packed lives and others simply go to work 5 days a week, shopping one day a week, and mow the lawn on the 7th day. Multiply that unchanged by 52 and a year has gone by.
Except as it triggers a bit of wistful envy I never minded receiving newsletters from the first group. The second group were pretty pointless IMO.
My impression of x-mas letters sent to a number of differently situated recipients is that they are best to present a broad picture. When the font gets below 12 and the second side is reached, I don’t care if the writer is Barack and Michelle Obama - they could do w/ fewer details.
The difference between: we travelled to Europe - had a great time, and describing every meal, flight delays, etc. Or, Junior started college, as opposed to describing his dorm, classes, etc. My personal thought is that that degree of detail is more appropriate for people you communicate with OTHER than via a once yearly holiday letter.
) and my daughter and her BF. I usually send out all 60 and probably get close to that many cards in return. I have never done the letter. We don’t have that much excitement during the year to report.