Thank you, I was starting to count white hairs.
It was hard to come up with a good distinction. I could just say “Some people like this and some people like that.” From my experiences, it just seems to be people from my parents generation prefer thank you notes while people from my generation don’t care as much. Of course, this isn’t true in every circumstance, culture, city, family, etc. I generalized too much before. Sorry.
It is polite to send a thank you note. It just shouldn’t be such a required part of the process that it becomes more important than anything else about giving the gift.
twickster, wanting an acknowledgement is reasonable. I thought you were after a long, handwritten thank you note or something. I misunderstood.
(My grandparents have caused this knee-jerk reaction in me, I swear. They actually disowned my sister because she never sent thank you notes and only thanked them on the phone. And the one time she actually did send a nice, handwritten note, it got lost in the mail and they accused her of lying, even though Mom and I had seen her send it and vouched for her. Poor girl. I give her half of everything they send to me now.)
You can’t draw any inferences at all. The tone of the writing certainly doesn’t tell you about her ability to write extended prose, and the brevity is an indication of nothing at all.
Yes, the obviousness that her mother told her to get in touch is a different matter. Would you be equally annoyed if, instead of the email, a written thank-you note had arrived two days later?
Who said we don’t? There’s plenty of informal ways to do it, from in a phone conversation to sending a text message (most of my Christmas thank-yous are dealt with in such a manner before the turkey’s cooked).
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of the thank you note. I guess I am lucky in that my wife and I - and all of our siblings, have obviously made an effort to instill this practice in our kids. So our kids send them, as do our nieces and nephews.
And it always strikes me as exceptionally gracious and pleasant when a social guest follows up with a little thank you (but I certainly don’t expect that).
We always say that a thank you note is required if you do not open the present in the giver’s presence. No specific word count required. Instead, ours are usually like:
Dear Aunt Twix.
Thank you for the generous gift certificate to Amazon.
I look forward to using it to buy ___.
Your niece,
___.
That is a bare minimum, tho I see it is up past 25 words if you include the greeting and sig. Wouldn’t hurt to toss in a simple sentence or two about she is looking forward to college, how happy she is to be out of high school, or how she wishes you had been at the party. We have told our kids that one of the benefits of cute little thank you cards is that they don’t take too much writing to fill up. In order to make it easier to write thank yous, we generally try to have a pack or two of note cards around the house.
I mentioned the e-mail thing simply because I didn’t know your communication habits. If you do not have an ongoing and regular e-mail relationship with someone, then you should definitely use snail mail.
Also, depending on your relationship, a phone call might be an acceptable alternative. Tho generally considered “less formal,” if you used the opportunity to “catch up” it might be better than a brief written note.
What you got from your niece strikes me as being just about the barest minimum acceptable. Might be a reminder to us that when we try to get away with the bare minimum, sometimes the effect is little better than doing nothing at all. Unfortunately, it seems that as society moves away from some of the more strict formalities, it seems that the alternative leaves you grateful to receive even the bare minimum civility in many social interactions.
Now that she sent you the e-mail, there is no way for you to mention this to your brother or the niece without coming across as petty and unreasonable. I think you can take some comfort, however, in the thought that now that she is 18 and out of HS, you are probably off the hook in terms of gifts until she gets married.
I’m a shithead. I never send thank you notes. I do, however, always call the person and thank them for the gift. She should have done that, at least.
Yes, but that is way unreasonable. Did they tell her they wanted thank you notes? Did they warn her?
Yeesh, I thought my parents disowned me for stupid stuff.
Join the circus, old lady!
But I don’t see that this is an age thing anyway. (Aaaand, on preview I see **Seren’s **explained away what I thought was a broad generalization…)
I often don’t get around to formal Thank You notes, but I keep some around, and I think it’s just a polite way to acknowledge a gift. I’d have no problem with a thank you e-mail, but I’m not sure a text message carries the same weight with me.
That okay, Seren’s post makes me feel good, I’m a Gen X’er pushing 40 and I generally do not send and never expect Thank You notes. So that makes me young, right?
Of course that also makes me one of the “ill-mannered slobs.” 
I think in today’s world we are transitioning away from thank you notes. I like saying thank you by email because it is quick and easy. I very rarely send anything by snailmail at this point. A book of stamps lasts close to a year for me.
(Bills are all to credit card or Direct Debit)
Jim
They warned her a couple times, and that’s why she did send out the handwritten note. Since she got disowned shortly after that, we’ll never know if she would’ve kept that up or not. She was good about thanking them on the phone though. She didn’t just say “thanks” and then hang up either. She actually had meaningful conversations with them. (I think they didn’t like her since she acts a lot like Dad, and they hate him.)
So, I’m a little biased on the thank you note matter.
Actually, I don’t really have a problem with personal calls, either…except I don’t like talking on the phone. (But that’s a ME issue and not a YOU issue - you calling me to thank me for the gift is great.)
I like the rule of “If you weren’t there to give the gift in person= thank you note”. I also think for people you don’t really know well you should be sending a card and not calling.
And I would be furious over the text-messaging crap. Then again, you can’t text-message me, as I have no medium to receive it. My cell phone is bare bones, thank Og.
You have hair to count??
Oh, my. :ducks and runs really far away:
:rolleyes:
I feel for your sister.
Why not? It may be the transatlantic difference in the way text messaging is used (there’s certainly previous threads discussing this!), but they can be a very immediate way of communicating. Like I say, on Christmas morning they’re particularly useful, because you’re not going to try to phone everyone, yet I still got plenty of immediate responses to thank-yous, within minutes of opening a gift.
Just brings me back to the countless times over a period of years, that when our kids were given gifts in person such as Christmas, and we insisted that they say “thank you” in a manner clearly audible to the giver. I couldn’t begin to count the number of times I would tell my kid to “Go up to your aunt and thank her, and be sure you have her attention and that she hears you.” And the kid will try to argue that a hurried shout of “thanks” to the room in general as they moved on to the next gift was adequate.
But I think there is a benefit to parents repeatedly insisting on such minor niceties when raising young’uns.
Wow. I’ve never even heard of a mobile phone which can’t deal with texts, let alone knowingly encountered one.
Get back to those grey hairs 
Mine is a TracFone. I highly doubt it could take texts. Even if it could, I never ever would. I mean, it’s rarely on unless I need to use it - I got it only for emergencies and long distance. It’s the only phone I could settle for…I hate cellphones with a passion but my car is kinda run-down and we no longer have a long distance plan.
And they’re white, not grey. Mine go straight to white. Get it right, whippersnapper!
Oh God, will the guilt never end? I just sent out the last of my thank-you cards for my wedding gifts…five months after getting married!
In my defense, we requested that no one give us gifts, but some people did anyway. Then I wrote all the thank-you cards and mailed…most of them. There were about seven that I set aside because I didn’t have proper addresses. I could have called and gotten the addresses, but I just kept procrastinating until finally, one of my husband’s aunts mentioned to his mother that she never got a card. Embarrassing? Oh yes indeedy.
OK, so that’s a definite “not can’t, but won’t”, then… http://www.tracfone.com/text_msg.jsp?nextPage=text_msg.jsp&task=text_msg
Well then the five people who have my phone number will just have to e-mail me or call me at home. 
Hahaha, how VERY true. I remember discovering this when I was younger. It was easy, by dint of adding a bit of cconversation stuff - “how are you, and aunt, and cousin etc?” - to need to open up the card and write on extra space, with the effect, at times, that relatives would then remark to my parents on how impressed they were that I had send “such a nice letter”. No, you fool - it only looked like a long letter. 
As for the OP’s “thank-you” e-mail? Well, it could do with not being quite so damn terse, no? I hope you are well, Aunt T, do you exciting travel plans for the summer, I am looking forward to university, blah blah.
I want to know if the recipient got the gift. (Especially since I am frequently sending hand-made quilts through the mail and biting my nails until I know they arrived safely.) And if they don’t acknowledge it at all, how do I know that they liked it? I wouldn’t want to offend people by sending them gifts they don’t want. If people don’t like my gifts enough to even take 5 minutes to let me know that they were received, when I invested quite a lot of time in them, then I just assume that they do not want me to send gifts, and I abide by that.
The joy of giving is wonderful, but it’s no fun to give things to people who don’t want them.