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 have received 4 and sent none. Two were from contractors that I had paid to have stuff done. One from next door and one from another mom at my kid’s school.
Who (we shall remember) most famously (in public print, no less) offered Bill Clinton oral sex for "keeping abortion legal."
So much for journalistic credibility.
We only sent out about 70 cards this year - down from 100+ in previous. It’s getting expensive and seems wasteful to broadcast cards to everyone we know, most of whom we haven’t seen/heard from for years and only think of when it’s time to send out cards based on last years list.
USPS postage rates are killing off the Christmas greeting cards. USPS is killing the Goose which lays the goldeen egggs for the USPS.
I got quite a few this year. However, in past years, I could practically wallpaper a room with the Christmas cards received, so yeah...fewer all the time.
lol
Especially when it’s much easier to just post it via Facebook to all of your friends.
Oh yeah, that reminds me, I did get one electronic card from a lady at church.
Probably about half of the mail I send every year is Christmas cards, and even then I overbuy stamps. Next year's October tax payment will still have this year's Christmas stamps on them.
I will readily admit that I have always been terrible at sending Christmas cards. Not sure why... the time gets away from me. However, yes.. we received about four or five... I think the postage rates have decreased the amount. When you start adding up the cost of food, gifts, etc.. not much left for postage.
There is one type of card that has always annoyed me... the dreaded “my life is so great and better than yours” card. Maybe I’m the only one that gets those. A relative or neighbor writes about their year.. “John and I had a wonderful time in Bora Bora, the kids are all going to Ivy League schools, I decided I didn’t like last years carpet colors so I replaced the entire house with new carpet again, attending the Kennedy Center every Friday night is becoming boring, the new Lexus is wonderful...” I hate those...
The price of stamps have only risen to keep up with the rate of inflation.
A thing of the past like the buggy whip. And another nail in the coffin of the USPS.
Is it me? Or is that Christmas tree “bent”?
Hallmark give to the DNC. Why not?
Sounds like me too. I used to send about 25 or so and receive a similar number till this year. I sent the usual 25 and received about 5. Maybe they did not like the NRA cards? I don’t know, but I don’t view the Internet as the same thing as a hand written card, too impersonal for me. Next year I sense I will send about 10 cards and these go to distant family and a few friends I have little contact with during the year albeit we are long standing friends. (my definition of friend is someone I have known for over ten years and whom will not ask for what when I call them for bail at 3AM)...
Merry Christmas to all on Free Republic.
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