We do. The Thai versions available locally are generally for New Year’s instead of Christmas, although some entrepreneurs try to combine the two to target farangs (Westerners). But it’s just something that became ingrained with me early on in life. You just send out cards come Christmas time.
It’s become something of a tradition with us. We write our messages in all of the cards in November and on the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving take them down to the huge old General Post Office. It looks like something out of Soviet-era Moscaow. Designed by the Italian Corrado Feroci, whom other surces name as one of Mussolini’s favorite artists, although that Wikipedia link fails to mention that. He became a Thai national and changed his name to Silpa Bhirasri after Italy surrendered in World War II, in order to keep from being arrested by the Japanese ocupiers here. Founded Silpakorn University, the foremost fine arts art university in Thailand.
But I digress. Anyway, we still mail out Christmas/New Year’s cards. Physical ones, requiring a stamp and everything. Are we alone?
I design and craft handmade greeting cards. Most of them I sell at two boutiques, but I still mail others to family and friends. I also receive plenty of them.
You mentioned that New Year’s cards were the norm in Thailand - this year, for the first time, my Solstice cards outsold my Christmas cards and there was a bump in sales of New Year’s cards as well.
Bought a fairly plain one last week. $2.99 at Kroger. :eek: :eek: plus postage.
Nope. I’m not mailing out a dozen Christmas Cards to relatives. That’s robbery!!
I sent internet greeting cards in the late 1990’s. Then they turned those into spam generators and I had to stop. :mad: They were harvesting the email addresses.
Purchasing them individually would not be economical but you can get bulk (12-20 cards) packs that work out to less than a dollar a card. Heck, you can get personalized cards with your picture on them printed out for about a dollar a piece.
At our house we are sending out 50 or so cards this year and have probably received 20 or so ourselves so far.
I didn’t, when I lived in NZ, but now that I’m in the UK I sent one to my parents and one to my Grandma. And they’re probably the only cards I’ll receive, but that’s okay - I would be surprised if any of my friends posted out cards.
Since 1981 I’ve created and printed my own card. I worked for a trade printer, so it was easy getting one of my cartoons printed into a booklet form. By '85 I was at a different shop, making halftones of my photographs and having cards made by a different trade printer that my shop had an account with.
When I was laid off in 1996, I started sending out a signed and numbered 5x7 B/W print in a folder. In 2004 I completely switched over to digital imaging, and started printing my own cards again.
Here’s this year’s picture. The sentiment inside reads: “Twisting through the winter wood, Twisting the year away.”
I have never sent a Christmas card in my life. Naturally, this means I don’t get many, but I get a few. I’ve gotten at least three this year, one from a close friend and two from children. One from my financial advisor, but that’s really a commercial. What they all send are personalized photos, often with a Christmas letter.
I guess people still do this, but I haven’t received any so far this year; I do know one of my friends has mailed hers, so I will be getting at least one.
I haven’t sent out Christmas/holiday cards in more than–I don’t know, 15 years? It’s just more trouble than it’s worth, I think. Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon.
There’s an American lady who has been here for donkeys’ years, and she puts some out that combine Christmas and New Year’s, mixing Santa with local themes. You can see them here. Really quite clever. We usually use her stuff, but this year we made up some featuring photos of us in various places throughout the region over the years.
Also liked the ones in Hawaii with local themes when we lived there. Unique.
I’m glad to learn I’m not alone. It feels like that sort of thing is drying up these days, what with e-cards and the like.
I sent out bunches until the Merry Christmas vs Happy Holidays controversy came about. When that happened, I decided “Fvck it, nobody is getting a card.” Thank you, Faux News; you saved me some bucks.
The Husband is a Graphic Designer, so we sent out Christmas cards partly because it’s fun and partly because we can do professionally-printed but made-by-us cards for cheap.
Unfortunately, the smallest batch our printer will do on the good press is 500. So, now we have about 470 more cards than we need. Anybody want one?
