Posted on 12/23/2012 7:40:12 AM PST by JoeProBono
Every year around the holidays, countless Americans sit down at their dining room tables to thoughtfully scribble pen-and-paper updates about how they are and what they've been doing with their lives to a select number of friends. These messages are usually written on the back of a recent family photograph (sometimes with Santa hats), before they're sealed, stamped, and mailed around the country, where they're displayed like a trophy over someone else's fireplace.
Could that all be changing? This year, especially, there seems to be a dearth of dead-tree holiday cheer filling up mailboxes across the country. In a recent column for TIME, author Nina Burleigh says the spirit once distilled inside the Christmas card is dying, and a familiar, if fairly obvious perpetrator killed it: The internet. "There's little point to writing a Christmas update now, with boasts about grades and athletic prowess, hospitalizations and holidays, and the dog's mishaps, when we have already posted these events and so much more of our minutiae all year long," she writes. "The urge to share has already been well sated."
[Now] we already have real-time windows into the lives of people thousands of miles away. We already know exactly how they've fared in the past year, much more than could possibly be conveyed by any single Christmas card. If a child or grandchild has been born to a former colleague or high school chum living across the continent, not only did I see it within hours on Shutterfly or Instagram or Facebook, I might have seen him or her take his or her first steps on YouTube. If a job was gotten or lost, a marriage made or ended, we have already witnessed the woe and joy of it on Facebook, email and Twitter.
Burleigh says the demise of the Christmas card is deeply saddening. "It portends the end of the U.S. Postal Service," she writes. "It signals the day is near when writing on paper is non-existent." It's true, says Tony Seifart at Memeburn — "my mantel is empty this year. In fact I haven't received one Christmas card yet.".......
I would ‘feel’ better if the young ladies did not have their fingers inside the trigger housing
The lad seems to have it right....
I know, Picky, picky, picky......
BUT that is the picture that you should place on the “My Neighbor HATES guns and is for gun control” sign...Really put the msg out
While the internet may be killing Christmas Cards (why pay for a stamp when e-mail is free?) I remember a time when the Christmas Card was a simple brief statement, not a journal of the year’s events. It was meant as just a cheery well-wish and not a summary of the year that some saw as “bragging” (i.e. MY daughter was an honor student this year and MY son was All-District. MY husband got a raise, blah blah blah...).
So the commiebabe is truly mourning the loss of a federal bureaucracy and the union (ie Democrat votes) stooges that come with it.
Somehow a Christmas email sent to a distribution list doesn’t have the same personal touch as a mailed card but I must admit it is an efficient way to distribute the all-important Christmas letter.
What an absolutely, beautiful letter. Yes... I hope we never give up sending Christmas letters of real meaning and the letter from the this family shows all of us what Christmas is about. I would keep that letter forever..
For the past several years Mr. Mercat has designed and sent his own, usually with a cute photo of our granddaughter. Last year it was a photo of my two older brothers at the ages of about 3 and 7 sledding in an old black and white photo. So glad he did because the younger one passed away this year. This year his mother is in her last few weeks and so caring for her has taken precedence over Christmas cards. His example did however, start our niece and nephew doing photo cards with their families and these are proudly displayed on our refrigerator. We get a few but not many. I don’t miss them.
This year, I built my cards around a 1909 Life Magaizine cover.
When I DON’T receive a Christmas Card or a Christmas e-mail, that is when I know my friend is dead. :-(
Mailing Christmas cards is probably dying out as the senders are dying.
My wife is a ludite in her 70’s, and she had a core list to send cards to every year of about 40 cards, and I had a core of about 10.
After I became proficient in computers about 2 decaces ago, she would have me do an annual Christmas update letter re our family to be copied. Then, she would send the letter with a hand written personal 1/2 page update to her/our friends and relatives with about a dozen in Christmas cards.
About 10 years ago, I started sending most of my so called Christmas letters via email to those with and using email.
I’m down to about 3 cards with the letters to ludites like my wife.
Now a total of 2 dozen Christmas Letters handles my wife’s and my short mailing list. At least two more people celebrated their last Christmas a year ago as this/year’s letters/Cards were returned, and we found out that these former friends are no longer around.
I communicate via Email with a lot of relatives and frends on a regular basis. So there is no need for a Christmas update letter.
This trend has to be devastating Hallmark, we used have two freestanding Hallmarks and a couple of seasonal shops in stores. The last Hallmark closed last year, and the shop area is becoming a chain specialty store which will carry some seasonal Cards, but probably not Hallmark.
That’s not the Christmas card, that’s the Christmas letter. Which has always been kind of annoying and weird. “Now I will tell all you people I didn’t talk to this year what happened while I was not talking to you”. Christmas cards are alive and well, my wife has forged my signature on nearly a hundred.
When my wife gets one of these cards, “the new Lexus is wonderful”
This is her reply:
Gee, what happened to your previous Lexus, our 7 year old Lexus is still great.
“... our 7 year old Lexus is still great”.
Mrs. Grampa Dave has a wonderful sense of humor!!!
That’s actually very funny.
Yes, that is ‘MORE BETTER’. (the little bit of Japanese I remember from my ‘glorious yute’)
Nice looking family...Yours?
I thought Santa was FOR gun control?
Notice he doesn’t mind having armed guards, and like BO and Quadafi (the late) doesn’t mind letting ladies do the ‘heavy work’....<: <:
Merry Christmas to you and yours.
“..send out cards based on last years list.”
Sounds like us. Less each year.
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