12 thoughts on writing my Christmas cards yesterday
• Yes, I still do this.
• I purchase printed folded cardboard, write my name inside and post to a cross section of people who still have some significance in my life. They do the same and we maintain the idea that we still think of each other at times other than the week before Christmas.
• Last year I sent e-cards, partly because of the hassle of tiered shopping but mainly because the queues at Post Offices were ridiculously long. And I don't mean commercial e-cards, I mean an email with some nice photos attached, which probably showed a lot more evidence of personal effort than buying physical cards.
• This year I'm sending 25 cards - ten to family and fifteen to acquaintances I've accumulated throughout my life. 15 doesn't feel very many but they're the ones who still send cards back. Of those 15 I've only seen two face-to-face in the last ten years. I used to send over 50 cards, back when I worked in an office with a large team, but not one of those coworkers is still on the list.
• Excluding my nephews and niece and their respective partners, nobody under the age of 48 is getting a card. I'm not sure if this because young people no longer believe in the things or simply because even the people who were in their teens and twenties when I first met them are in their fifties now.
• I didn't check the last posting dates because I assumed eight days before Christmas should be safe enough. In fact the last posting date for Christmas is Tuesday for 1st class and tomorrow for 2nd class so I only just got in on time. Indeed given that last collections at many pillar boxes are now first thing in the morning, 'tomorrow' really means today.
• As usual the stamps cost more than the cards. I haven't bought cheap cards but they're easily outpriced by the 66p the Royal Mail now charges for a second class stamp. This is 30p more than ten years ago and 47p more than 20 years ago. That said, a 1st class stamp now costs (sheesh) 85p, and no Christmas card is worth that much.
• All the cards arriving at my place this year have nice Christmas stamps on, whereas I bought books of stamps in the shop where I bought the cards and they're just bogstandard blue stamps with no festive frisson whatsoever. That said, at least I can use my leftovers next year when a Christmas stamp would look gauche.
• I used to slip a printed extra into my Christmas cards and these were usually very well received. They were also a lot of effort so these days my cards tend to be empty instead, and all I can picture now is recipients excited to see an envelope from me has arrived and then sorely disappointed when all I've done inside is sign it.
• I should probably send my cards earlier so that they spend the maximum amount of time on display at their destination, but I always hold back in case anyone's incoming card contains a key snippet of information like they've moved house, someone's been born or someone's died, and invariably they haven't.
• I store all my important addresses in Outlook on my laptop, and it strikes me that if either of those were to fail I'd be stuffed Christmascard-wise. I did print out the list one year but I can't remember where I put it, so this year I lined up all the envelopes on the carpet before posting and took a photo for my archives.
• Normally I have the option of taking my family's cards up to Norfolk rather than posting them but this year there's a growing chance I won't be heading up there, omicron depending, so I've posted them all. At least the Christmas post always gets through.
