Now, wait a minute, Mr Postman – where are my festive cards

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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In the last 48 hours I have received Yuletide greetings from almost 100 people.

Quite a good innings, wouldn’t you say?

The trouble is 28 of these came via Facebook, eight through Twitter, 26 via email and five on text message.

Only 30 were in the traditional format – that of the old-fashioned Christmas card.

I’ve got to admit I’m disappointed. Last year I had double this number decorating my fireplace. And this year I’ve sent out a good 70 of my own.

So what’s gone wrong?

Have I managed to insult all my usual pen pals enough to be struck off the Christmas card list? It’s possible I suppose but I don’t think this is it. After all, many of them have still found time to send me a witty one-liner online.

Well are more of them on an environmental crusade to save the trees? No, that can’t be it. Christmas is far and away the most wasteful time of the year but most of us recycle these days, don’t we?

Ok well in that case maybe the Royal Mail has managed to stamp out the habit by upping the price of a second class stamp from 36p to 50p?

This must mean that my friends like me, but not enough to spend 50p on me. They will spend 36p, yes, but 50p, no.

Oh dear. It may be outmoded. It may be unnecessary. But surely sending cards still sums up the true spirit of Christmas?

After all, it shows people you care enough to stay in touch, that you still think of them, albeit annually.

One of my friends says it is for this very reason that she has stopped posting her season’s greetings.

“I know ‘tis the season of goodwill to all men,” she said. “But there is a jolly good reason why I do not correspond with certain people more.”

“Scrooge,” I replied grinning.

“Maybe I am,” she said. “But it makes me feel worse, not better, when I get cards from old friends who say ‘it’s been ages, we really must meet up in the New Year’.

“Truth is neither of us have any intention of doing so. It’s just embarrassing that we both continue with this charade.”

She has a point.

I have to admit that some of my own friendships have fallen so badly by the wayside that on a few of the cards I sent this year I had to write “and family” because I couldn’t remember the names of their husbands and children.

My husband said it would have been better to write the forgotten names illegibly, but, as I pointed out, the trouble with that is you have to be consistent and scribble your own name too, which means then the recipient doesn’t know who sent the card anyway.

I bet you didn’t know that this year is the 170th anniversary of the first mass-produced Christmas card?

The tradition started in England in 1843 - the same year that Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” was published.

Henry Cole, an author, hired illustrator John Calcott Horsley to design his greeting so he could post it to his long list of friends and acquaintances.

The card featured a family gathered for their holiday feast all raising a glass.

Since then the Christmas card has taken many forms. For a long time it was all about the Baby Jesus, mangers, shepherds, the three Kings, the north star.

Then there was a trend for charity cards, usually produced on poor-quality paper and decorated with snowmen, sleighs or reindeer.

More recently it’s been all about showing off the family.

This started with the inclusion of a line or two of family news and blossomed into those tedious “what we did this year” style round robin letters.

Then all cards featured photographs.

Pictures of bonny babies in Elf costumes, the pet pooch wearing antlers and staged family line-ups, everyone forcing a smile. I’ve done my fair share of these. What can I say? I’m nauseatingly proud of my kids.

Which brings me to this year which, it seems, is about children’s artwork. My kids came home from school proudly showing off their festive scribbles at the start of December and I managed to merge the two into one offering and agreed to fork out to have them all printed off into cards.

I had to. I didn’t have the heart to tell my three-year-old son that his attempt at drawing holly just looked like a fingerprint blob in between two smudgy green handprints.

And anyway even if it does resemble a splurge of snot over a Christmas tree, I still believe it’s better to send a proper card than an outrageously impersonal e-missive, Tweet or a social media message.

Computers may have killed off most pen-and-paper correspondence, but I really hope we will never ever see the end of Christmas cards.

It may be the only time of the year when we address an envelope, affix a stamp or use a postbox but there is something charming about keeping a tradition like this alive.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

[stokes11eg]

A lot of people I know are not sending cards at all, sending the money to charity instead. I may do this myself next year. Maybe if R/M reduced stamp prices at Christmas?

[Lounge Lizard]

"Only 30 were in the traditional format – that of the old-fashioned Christmas card. Last year I had double this number decorating my fireplace."
"Maybe the Royal Mail has managed to stamp out the habit by upping the price of a second class stamp from 36p to 50p?" - but that was back in April 2012, not this year.

[Straight4ward]

I’ve got to admit I’m disappointed. Last year I had double this number decorating my fireplace. And this year I’ve sent out a good 70 of my own.

So what’s gone wrong?

Simple enough, your friends are tight bastards.

[Stormproof]

I've not written or sent a Christmas Card since Woolworths closed........the only place where you could buy a bulk box of cards for a reasonable price. Its not like i've not got the stamps to put on them