I love sending cards! I do my best to write a personal note in each one. Unfortunately, we aren’t going to get our Christmas pictures until Friday, otherwise I would have included a picture of my super-cute baby boy.
This year, the tally was 63.
Just finished ours about ten minutes ago (I had one last address I needed to google) - we send out 18. Because that’s all that come in a box. Well, 20 - I buy special ones for each of our mothers. Basically we send them to our siblings, husbands good clients, and a few friends. That’s it. $4.99 plus postage - and I figure it ain’t gonna kill me.
I haven’t for the last couple of years. 'Round these parts, it’s common to send the Christmas letter. I know many people hate them, but I really do enjoy them. I like hearing about what everyone has been up to this year, especially the people I don’t get to see often enough. I like reading about new grandchildren and weddings and all that jazz. A rundown of the family vacations I can live without, but whatever. My problem is that there’s really nothing to say in a Christmas letter. We don’t have kids, so there’s nothing to report on that front. I also don’t know what people would want with a picture card of the two of us or our pets. So I don’t send them. I really should. Maybe I’ll get around to it again next year.
I sent out about 100 this year, just turned 50 so maybe its an age thing.
It was always part of our Christmas tradition, my Dad ran a factory when I was a child and felt every employee should receive a card, so I grew seeing it be done every year.
When I grew up I began to travel and found Christmas was a natural time to stay in touch with people I’d met in distant lands. It was only one tiny step from there to thinking, “but what about the people I love who live right here, that I don’t actually get to see often?”
I don’t get near the number I send out, nor do I expect to. But I really enjoy getting them. I always keep them, though I’m not sure what I’ll end up doing with them.
( For six years I also took on the burden of doing my Mother In Law’s cards. She’d had a stroke that left her bedridden and living in my home. She’d always been so on top of her cards and sent out a lot of them, writing a note into each one. I was struggling with just taking care of her and the cards were sometimes more than I thought I could do. Somehow I always managed, she eventually couldn’t even sign and I was doing all of it. Each year I would struggle and think no one would fault us for not doing it, and seriously contemplated not doing it. But still I did it, photo cards of her smiling and waving taken on my digital camera. This is our first Christmas without her and I have to confess I shed tears when I was doing my cards, finding her Christmas card list right along with ours. Now I’m so glad I had the chance to do them all those years. Each year she would be showered with cards, with words of praise for how good she looked. It made her enormously happy. I really miss her.)
Uh oh.
The ones she sends have a personal message – I read that part – who gets enough of “You’re the best mamma ever!” ? – but I don’t open the animation or the music.
El Perro Fumando, I’m going to try that – make gift tags from the cards. Great idea!
I just did most of ours last night; I’m way late this year! Since I’m so late, I went the impersonal horrible route with a photo card (yay CostCo) and a little printed update–it’s not a whole newsletter because we have no news this year–but no actual handwritten message from me. Which is awful, I hate when people do that and I usually write something personal on each card, but it was either send them out wrong, or not send them until January.
Ahem. Usually I have a letter and a photo, and write something on each one. I send about 40 out–family members I don’t usually see, old friends, etc. I like to send real cards too, but in the past couple of years I’ve decided that if I have a letter, a card is rather a lot to put in as well. I happen to like newsletters as long as they aren’t boastful or 10 pages long, so I write one and try to make it funny.
I have to admit that I don’t send out Christmas cards. In years past I’ve relied on my wife to do it, but this year she didn’t feel like it, so she didn’t. It’s easy to see the correlation between sending out cards and getting cards. I doubt we’ve gotten more than three or four this year.
This is not, by the way, an objection of principle. It’s mostly just shiftlessness and procrastination, which are the dominant themes of my Christmas planning. As an example, we put off getting the tree because of other stuff, and by the time we got to the tree place, they had literally three trees left on the lot. (It’s not a bad tree for all that!)
I’m against Christmas cards. I only send them to people who send me one. So I don’t feel like a total lout. I’m 25, by the way, and married a year. Last year, my husband took a picture of us and our tree and sent it to our friends en masse with a little holiday message, but that was us just being goofy with our college friends. We didn’t send it to family.
Speaking of family, what’s the deal with cards with no message? This happens all the time from my relatives. I’d rather the relatives save their money and not send a card at all than send a card that just says “Aunt Franny and Uncle Bob.” Write something in it, even a “canned” message, or don’t bother.
I’m guilty of this. If the card is going to someone I talk to regularly, there’s no message. The others, they get a few lines.
I’m tempted to do a Christmas letter, but I’ve bitched about them so much, I’d feel like a hypocrite. My son does one and his is funny. But funny is hard.
I’m 29, and I send cards with handwritten personal messages, but to a limited group of people. Primarily they go to people I like but do not see or call regularly. Many of my female friends also do handwritten holiday cards. Maybe we are strange for our generation.
You just gave me two great ideas- the fridge thing and the tag thing- excellent ideas, both of them. Thanks! 
I love sending Christmas cards, I love going to the Community House and selecting the cards they have there that support local charities, I love sending them.
This year I sent more than I normally do. We’re moving in January so it was the perfect way to kill a few birds with one stone (and to let everyone know that we’d finally bought our own first house) - I slipped a “We’re Moving!” note with new contact details into each envelope so everyone we knew would be aware of our new digs.