By Sarah Vander Schaaff / The Washington Post
This December, I sent a holiday card that did not feature a family photo. It was the only way out of the stalemate I’d reached with my 14-year-old daughter who has final approval of any photo I send that includes her.
Two weeks before crunch-time I’d texted her four photos.
“Which do you like?” I asked.
“None,” she replied. I had 100 stamps sitting on my desk and a self-imposed deadline of getting the cards in the mail before Christmas.
And that is how I landed on a card featuring a painting of a deer sitting in the woods. “We have teenagers, and couldn’t agree on a photo,” I wrote below the holiday greeting.
Now, with some space between the holidays and my thoughts, I wonder if I’ll be doing that again.
Eight years ago, when the price of stamps reached 45 cents, my mother predicted the end of holiday cards. But many of us, encouraged by the ability to design the cards online, have stuck it out, contributing to what amounts to 1.6 billion units a season. I have now been sending cards for 18 years. The hassle, and the pleasure, have been consistent parts of my adulthood.
But as I took the holiday cards we received this year down from the kitchen door where I tape them this colorful collage of friends, I noticed we had gotten fewer. Was this because of social media, where updates and photos stream constantly, making a yearly card obsolete? Concern for the environment? The sense that the world is in crisis and cards are trivial? The cost of cards, and yes, stamps? Or, had my friends hit the formidable challenge of a teenager and instead of opting for a deer in the woods, opted out entirely?
“What happened?” I asked one friend. Last year she sent postcards, ditching the need for an envelope and extra postage. I thought it was a smart and sustainable move. In fact, it was an omen. This year she sent nothing.
“I kind of regret it,” she told me, saying she missed the communication. But nobody complained, she said. Not even her mom.
Last May, Libby Nelson realized she’d forgotten to mail half of her holiday cards. “But I had addressed them. So, I sent them in May.”
This year, thinking about what her half-mailed snafu signified, and using the kind of self-reflection she uses as a certified personal life coach, she set the intention of moving through the holiday season with less stress.
“I have spent my whole life trying to live up to my mother’s level of energy and commitment to everything,” Libby said. Holiday cards were a big part of that commitment-her mom still sends a long letter each year, telling her that someday the collection will reflect the entire family history.
At the beginning of December, Libby sat down and prepared herself. “I set some intentions for each day and the biggest one was to let go of one thing each day.”
She let go of sending holiday cards.
But what about millennials, I wondered, especially young couples with new babies? “If there was one year we were going to send out holiday cards, this was it,” Janessa Urwin, 31, who had her first baby this November, said.
Her husband, Ed, said they are checking off the list of things that make them an adult. “Getting married, buying a house, contributing to a 401(k).” Sending holiday cards would be on that list, he said.
They had the perfect professional picture taken of their baby wearing a Santa hat, holding a snowman, resting under a velvet blanket.
In the end, they put the photo on Facebook and texted it to family members not on social media.
Although they mailed paper invitations out for their wedding, neither Urwin keeps an address book or list of addresses. “I’m more likely able to know how to Venmo someone money than know their street address.”
They received about 10 cards this year, most from managers at work.
The baby boomers in my life, as usual, are in a class by themselves. These friends, almost all empty-nesters, send poems, thoughts on current events, updates on their growing grandchildren, or beautiful notecards from museum gift shops. They are edifying and some, like the one I receive from Mary Pat and Michael Robertson, have relevance all year long.
“Everybody has a negative impression of the holiday letter,” Mary Pat said, comparing them to fruitcakes. “What we didn’t want to do in a letter was brag about what our family was doing or what a fantastic child we had. We wanted to share a little more about what we were thinking and what made an impression on us.”
They started their letter tradition in 2000. Their daughter was a teen, no longer wanting to be the center of attention in their cards. The three-page letter this year included brief reviews of eight books, ranging in themes from Brexit to Artificial Intelligence and Ebola.
Jim Hilt, president of Shutterfly, said the company has been studying the holiday card landscape for two decades. Each year, about half of American households send some sort of greeting. A recession, an election year, or shortened number of days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, as we had this past season, may contribute to a slight decline. But even then, and with the advent of digital cards, the paper card is resilient.
“The card itself is like a gift,” he said. It suggests, “You’re not so important to me that I’m giving you a package, but important enough to me for you to remember what my family is all about.”
The proliferation of digital photo taking and social media have not had a negative impact on their business, he said.
“You’re already editing. It’s easier to make your holiday card,” he said.
Patrick Priore, chief merchandising officer at Paper Source, said the holiday card business has not slowed down. “In fact, it’s growing because people are trying to find new ways to express themselves and I don’t see that happening digitally.”
Consumers are more conscious of ethical production components, he said. “They want something that lasts and not something that is going to be irresponsible to the planet,” he said.
The desire to stay in touch with friends and to return, at least once a year, to the act of putting a stamp on the letter and communicating in a slow and tangible way, is one aspect of our society that seems fragile. I feel the confluence of several factors pushing me towards a change in this small, but significant tradition.
Maybe next year, I will do a postcard. Or maybe another deer in the woods. Or maybe, nothing at all. And, maybe, in 20 years, I’ll write my own letter with book recommendations. As we find with so many things, our personal decisions are inextricably linked with where we are in our evolving lives and a changing society.
It reminds me of the box of postcards I have from my great-grandmother. The one-cent stamps are postmarked between 1909 and 1914, when she was a teenager. “We got home safe and hope you got home safe too,” one note says.
I love looking at the short notes, written in longhand, and the images on front of the cards — photographs of women in turn-of-the-century clothes or Victorian cherubs — and piecing together clues about the people she knew and what they cared about.
“How interesting,” I imagine a great-granddaughter saying if she ever comes across a box of my holiday cards a hundred years from now. “They used to send these.”
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