Christmas cards. Both Janet and D.Z. enjoy receiving Christmas cards. It’s a familiar ritual, one that we both like. However, we’ve noticed that these days people don’t send as many of these holiday missives. We have things to say about that, so here goes!
I don’t receive as many Christmas cards as I used to. I suppose some people think it’s easier to make a phone call, send an email, or queue up an electronic card. Of course, there are people who don’t send cards and letters, and never did.
And there are people who buy the cards, sit and address them, and include personal notes or even Christmas letters before mailing them. Using holiday stamps, of course. Those are my people.
The number of Christmas cards sent every year has dropped over past decades. Still, the US Postal Service says over 1.1 billion Christmas cards were sent in 2024. Hallmark Cards puts that figure at 1.3 billion (and they should know!). So, the tradition remains popular.
The Christmas card custom dates back nearly 200 years. Commercially sold Christmas cards first appeared in Britain in 1843 and gained popularity. British company Prang and Mayer started selling Christmas cards in America in 1874. At some point, postcards became popular, replacing the more elaborate Victorian-style cards. But cards with envelopes returned in the 1920s. Hallmark Cards established their brand in 1913. Cards evolved with changing tastes—they still are. Efficient printing techniques and a burgeoning market made the production of Christmas cards profitable throughout the 20th century.
I enjoy sending and receiving Christmas cards. And picking out which cards to send. My cards usually have cats on them, but not always. I also like going to the post office to pick out the holiday stamps to put on those envelopes.
Sending cards is a great way to check in with people, to let them know how I am and how my year went. Hence the Christmas letter. Writing a Christmas letter is an art. My year is not all sweetness, light, and wonderful things—and I want my missive to reflect that. So, my letter includes the various ups and downs I’ve experienced in the past 12 months. I have a friend in Southern California who doesn’t send cards anymore, let alone emails. But she looks forward to receiving my card and Christmas letter and promptly calls me on the phone for long conversation. So, I’m looking forward to her call. It’s the connection that’s important.
Some people display Christmas cards by taping them to the walls and doors or stringing them on ribbons or cords. It was different at our house. Mom had a little red wooden sleigh. It was about eight inches long and it sat on a tabletop. That’s where she put the Christmas cards she received, so many of them stuffed inside that the sleigh would sometimes topple. At some point during my holiday visit, I would sit on the sofa with the red sleigh next to me and go through the cards, reading notes and letters from various aunts, uncles, cousins, and Mom’s friends. A ritual of the season, certainly.
Mom had a wide Christmas card circle, that’s for sure. During World War II, Mom and Dad rented a room from a woman in Tacoma, Washington while Dad, who was in the Navy, was waiting for his ship to be built. Mom was working in a defense plant. For years Mom exchanged Christmas cards with her former landlady. We had lots of relatives on both sides of the family, and that certainly added to the cards in the red sleigh. She had lifelong friends from college. Mom worked at the bank for 20 years, interacting with local folks conducting their financial business. She was active in her church, played tennis for decades, and after she retired, she volunteered at the local food bank. It seemed Mom knew just about everyone in town. That was reflected in the wide array of Christmas cards she received.
I have my own card holder, one I sewed myself, hanging on the wall in my hallway. So far this year, just one card. But it’s early days yet. Most people, I suspect, are like me, looking at the calendar and wondering how it got to be early December already. Time to dig out the Christmas cards. I’ve already started my Christmas letter.
Now I have that song in my head. Because “with every Christmas card I write” is a lyric from White Christmas, the wonderful Christmas song by Irving Berlin. Which is also my favorite Christmas movie.
I’d better get busy! I have a lot to do!
When I was ten, we lived in a brick house in Michigan that had a front foyer. The foyer had four doors: one to the living room, one to my parents’ bedroom, the entry door and the door to the second floor. All on different walls. On either side of each door was a strip about five inches wide to the corner.
Every Christmas, every inch of those five-inch strips and the wall above each door was covered in Christmas cards, each carefully read before being hung, often one from another. It was glorious. Each card adding to the holiday spirit.
As few as ten years ago, my husband and I strung cards up and down and around French doors in our home. Last year, we received barely enough to place across the top of one door.
Now we get general Merry Christmases on social media and e-cards. It isn’t the same as ripping open an envelope and oohing and aahing over the card, getting sparkles on your fingers, and checking for the Hallmark on the back. I miss the personalized greetings. I do.
In One Horse Too Many, one of the Wanee Mysteries, Cora is walking across the park opposite her home mid-winter and muses. “Ahead, the floating white flakes against the aging brick of Countryman House with its white trim and wraparound porch might have decorated a Christmas card like the one Cora saw pictured in Harper’s Bazar the year before. Some people ordered such cards and sent them to acquaintances living in other towns or as season’s wishes to those they knew in their community. She rather liked the thought of that.” It is late 1876.
The tradition, begun then, seems over. Mind you, I still write a Christmas letter and send it out to all those on my Christmas card list. Each year, fewer and fewer respond. You know it’s bad when you look forward to opening the envelope from your alma mater, the one you contributed to, because they always send a nice card.
It is even getting harder and harder to go to a brick-and-mortar store and buy Christmas cards. Not to get into the whole remember-when thing, but remember when there would be racks and racks of delicious cards to choose from. Though a religious holiday, it was always the time, no matter who the card was addressed to, to catch up, say hi, send a picture of the kids, brag about vacations, and share in being alive.
Does anyone really think posting a picture on social media and sending it out to the world meets this criterion? It isn’t personal, it isn’t sharing, and who even checks their social media accounts anymore unless they are wild for ads, posts from who knows where about people you don’t even know, and whatever else the media pushes at you.
Maybe I should write a mystery about a person who somehow manages to reverse the no-Christmas-card trend. I’m not sure how they would manage it. Maybe send a card to everyone in their small town, or the next town over. Maybe it has already been turned into a Hallmark Christmas movie, you know the one. A girl sends cards to every address in her small rural town. A new guy in town gets a card. He looks for the girl. Their meet-cute is grumpy, awkward or weird. She finds out his backstory. Sees him sitting on a park bench with her card in his hand. And … well, there you go. Of course, for it to be a mystery, there would have to be something stolen or lost, or a dead body, or a misdelivered card or …
So here is my Christmas wish for you: send cards to everyone you can think of, each with a personal note and maybe a Christmas letter. Then plaster your walls with those you receive in return and relish the joy of it!