I can’t help but notice that it has been more than a day and the OP hasn’t come back to thank us all for responding.
Sorry, I’m all out of stamps.
I think this might be why it’s fallen out of favor. If you require anything from me in order to give me something, I don’t consider that a gift. Sure, I thank people as a matter of course, but if I ever got wind that you were requiring me to do so, I would at least stop thinking of what we exchange as a gift, if not completely stop accepting gifts from you.
I really do buy into the idea that a gift should come with absolutely no strings attached, or it isn’t a gift.
Did they say “thank you” in other ways?
I haven’t seen a written-on-paper “thank you note” in years, but then, my sister in law is the only person I know who still sends paper Christmas cards.
No. The only one that sorta gets me is the wedding I couldn’t go to (it was in Sept. in the US). I sent them a gift via their honeymoon registry and haven’t heard anything from them since. 
OK, then they deserve a thoroughly iced shoulder. They may be in “I have to write to people” mode (specially if they weren’t living together at the time of the wedding, even if they had done it before), or they may be what my mother calls “gift hunters”: the ones who expect their wedding to be paid for by the guests.
I gave my sister’s step daughter a large cash present when she was pregnant and they didn’t have enough money.
Never got any thanks, even an email. :mad:
Thank you notes are still in style. Eventually, people will find email notes acceptable. Still I have to admit, my wife and I had a nice warm feeling when we sent a wedding gift to my daughter-in-law’s half sister (whom we had met, but didn’t know well) and got a very nice note from her in which she thanked us for the specific gift and explained how she would use it.
I cannot restrain myself from telling about the thank you notes my grandson sent after his 8th birthday present. His mother insisted he write them and then she looked at a few of them and shared the results with us. To one he wrote, “Thank you for the dump truck. I’ve been dumping all over ever since”. To another he wrote, “Thank you for the jigsaw puzzle. I already have it half completed.” He had not, in fact, opened it. Maybe he will write novels.
I have trouble writing thank-you notes to people who continue to send me gifts despite my repeated statements that I do not wish to receive any gifts.
When I was a kid, I could never wrap my head around the concept of having to write a thank-you note to somebody I had already thanked verbally, in-person, at the time the gift was received (for example, Christmas at the grandparents’ house). It seemed like a waste of time and resources, but my mom insisted.
There are some bafflingly extreme thank-you writers out there. I have an older roommate who works in children’s ministry at our church. For a few years he was helping out a single mother who had several children, and he picked up and brought the kids to church every week. Eventually, that family moved away to another nearby town. One day one of the kids called him up to chat. As soon as the call was over, my roommate pulled out a box of cards, selected a thank-you card, composed a “thank you for calling me on the phone” letter, and dropped it in the mail. I boggled.
I wish they would go out of style, because they’re a waste of paper. I mean, surely someone who takes the time to send a thank you note should expect to receive a note thanking them for *their *note, right?
But no. We sent them to everyone who sent us a wedding gift, or gave my wife a shower gift, and we’ve received them from pretty much everyone we gave wedding gifts to.
I received a snail mail thank you card for a baby shower present I gave a friend last year and we are in the early 20s cohort, so it can’t be going out of style. I was taught growing up that not sending thank you notes for gifts I was given was heinously rude and I was an embarrassment to the family if I failed to do so. It was expected as soon as I learned to write.
Now that I’m older, my relatives all send me money instead of actual presents, so the rule I have for myself is that I’m not allowed to deposit the money until the thank-you note is in the mail. Since my parents also told me that it is rude to sit on a check forever without depositing it because then the giver’s account doesn’t balance, it sets a sort of deadline for mailing the things out.
I personally don’t care if I ever got another thank you card again. It’s just another piece of paper I feel guilty about throwing away so it gets tossed in a box somewhere until I find it years later, wonder what it was for, and throw the damned thing away.
I keep very few birthday cards and notes, but I did keep the thank-you note my sister sent me from her wedding. It was a nice note, acknowledging all the help I had given her as her matron-of-honour.
Same here. Definitely one of the most pointless social custom ever.
What is a gift? A gift is when you give someone something and because you are a generous person, *you expect nothing in return. * Otherwise, it is just a barter or a purchase. People demand their thank you note like it is just a delayed payment!
When I get a thank you note I think to myself, they didn’t want to write it, I didn’t want to receive it, so why are we doing this? I’ve always sent thank you notes when required, but they make me feel less thankful.