The End Of Christmas Cards

I wonder if the tradition of sending Christmas cards is dying, maybe nearly dead. I think it might be. It's another end for tradition killed by technology and changing taste. Whether it's a good thing Christmas cards are disappearing is a matter of taste, I suppose. But just as the old postal system, snail mail as the electronic tech crowd derisively named it years ago, dies so will mailing Christmas cards.

I did just mail out some myself, though in a lower volume than last year. Whittling the list and not sending cards to those people who don't return the greetings I send is shrinking my card list. I did notice a decline in cards received the past few years. People to whom I send cards don't always respond with a card of their own, a message that, "We don't do Christmas cards anymore". A few do send me electronic cards, but those have little appeal to me. They are too easy to send. Without the investment of time and effort in sending a Christmas greeting the greeting itself loses appeal. And a card in the mail is tangible, can be held in the had and stored as a memory. Electronic cards are here in an instant and just as quickly forgotten.

I think that our easy to use technology discourages such quaint , old traditions as sending Christmas cards. I remember my dad, who was the family member who sent the Christmas cards, sitting at the kitchen table in late November, cards, stamps and his list of the names and addresses of past recipients and senders who were to receive a card that year. It was a task of labor and endurance that took more time than most of us would want to spend in this age of instant gratification.

I guess many of the Christmas traditions are disappearing. Does anyone kiss under the mistletoe anymore? In our age of environmentalism and political correctness, those artificial trees are no more common than a real, live tree. Traditional Christmas cakes of all types are rarely baked at home anymore and we now avoid fruitcake as if it were a virus. The Christmas stocking... more than half of families don't hang them anymore. I remember as a child walking the neighborhood with a group and singing Christmas carols to both the willing and unwilling neighbors. Try caroling today and you may risk arrest.

Maybe the new, modern Christmas traditions will become as endearing. But I doubt it will for me. It just seems more fun to kiss under the mistletoe than to "Christmas shop" at a mall. Anyway, the good news is we'll probably continue to have Christmas in some from for a long time to come.