Holiday Cards: Are they Endangered?

I hope holiday cards don’t disappear all together. I know that the Internet is unbelievably useful for connecting electronically and sharing information and photos. Many people right here in Silicon Valley work hard to supply hardware and software to build the infrastructure to create the bandwidth which supports the flow of all this information.  

However, I still love going out to the front yard, opening the mailbox and pulling out a stack of envelopes, many in beautiful colors, many addressed by hand. I love pouring over the picture collages and wading through the letters listing achievements, activities, vacations and fun: all the best parts of life. I also love making, addressing and sending cards each year. Every year I send out about 100 cards, some to friends, many to relatives. The annual exchange of holiday cards is a wonderful tradition and I hope it doesn’t go away. Sadly, it's becoming another thing lost to technological advancement.

We work hard trying to capture the perfect holiday picture and it has become part of our family holiday tradition. Over the Thanksgiving weekend I tell my three children to put on their designated “photo ready” outfits and get ready for holiday picture time. There’s always some moaning, especially from my older kids but that’s what makes it special. They start with the moaning but the reality is that and I am convinced of this: they always love it once we get started. 

They laugh, ham it up and have fun making mischief while I click away with my camera. I upload the photos, edit them, generally decide we don’t have a photo that is worthy of a holiday card printing so we end up doing the whole procedure over again. Often a shirt gets rumpled or someone’s hair flies out of place but we eventually get there. Our Thanksgiving vacation would not be complete without this annual ritual.  

A few years ago, a close family friend sent me an envelope containing about 20 old Christmas cards that I had sent to her over the years. There were pictures of us as a newly married couple, pictures and notes about our first born baby, pictures of our family on vacation and picture collages from the old days before Shutterfly when you actually had to take out a scissors and cut the photos to make them fit and then run to Kinko’s to produce expensive color photo copies. 

What I received was a wonderful, evolving story about our life. I bought a blank book and filled the pages with the cards and photos, filling in a few missing years and adding some additional favorite holiday photos. This book has become my favorite memory book and has been enjoyed by dozens of family members and close friends.  

Because you can touch and hold the book and it includes many hand written notes, it is just so much better than the slick electronic versions. Since this book is such a success, I have followed my friend’s lead and sent several envelopes to longtime friends containing dozens of old cards and pictures that I saved over the years. Maybe they will do the same thing and create a special book.

So even though we live in an incredible technological innovative age, and we all love to exchange information and photos electronically, please continue to make and send your holiday cards. It's early and you still have plenty of time to do it! I promise to read them, cherish them and save them and I promise I will send you mine.