This year will be the third year of my creating a holiday card for people to send out. While I create them, I do know that sending out holiday cards, real holiday cards, is a dying form of communication. Like letter writing, or even gift giving for that matter, the idea of an effort-based form of expression is, well, an effort.
It’s not that our need for communication has changed, but how we communicate is what has changed. E-cards, texts, Facebook posts, Instagram pics of kittens are all what is around us. And truthfully, they fall short when it comes to the idea of “effort.” When one makes the effort to send out something like a holiday card, it is an investment of time in putting together the cards, the list, the writing a thought or two to your friend, getting that holiday stamp (or two or three if it’s out of the country) and getting them out in mail well before December 25.
And a real holiday card is what matters. None of these photo slips of paper with a picture of your backyard July barbecue and the word “Joy!” slapped on it. Those are verboten in my book. They are still done with a click of the mouse and not a click of the pen. There are those who write a two-page synopsis of what is going on with their family in the past year. That is also verboten. If you can’t pick up the phone to call once with your family or friends, what is the point in filling them in on what you’ve been up to now? And really, no one really wants to know how you are doing. What they want to know is that you want to know how they are doing!
What people need now is thoughtful effort. A card selected; a pen used to write a person’s name on the envelope. A line or two saying how much that person means to you.
You get those cards, and you realize that your friend is on the other end of that card. They wrote, they licked the envelope and since they can’t buy you a Tesla, they want you to know the card represents their true best wishes for you.
For our family, the cards come in and get put up in our house on the entryway of the living room. They are as festive, colorful, and meaningful as the Christmas tree. You literally gather your friends and family around you. That is the magic of a holiday card.
Yes, it is an industry that is slowly dying. And after a while, with AI, I am sure there will be computers just sending greetings to computers.
And yes, even though I would like you to purchase the cards I make, that is not the aim of this blog. We live in a world where increasingly, people don’t matter. The news painfully points that out with war, with immigration, with politics. You may not be able to change the world, but you can make the effort to change the belief system that prevails. A thoughtful card for the holiday for a friend might change their life. And that is worth the effort.
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