Dying Christmas Traditions

The rise of communication technology is effecting quite a bit of our long held traditions. I thought about that as I pulled out my Christmas card list today and noticed it is a list that is shrinking rapidly. Just about five years or so ago I sent Christmas cards to somewhere between 30 and 40 people. But now it approaches 10 in number, as more and more people have altogether stopped sending out Christmas cards.

The custom of sending Christmas cards was started in the Britain in 1843, at a time when letter writing was the principal method of communication between people who were separated by distance. But who writes snail letters today? Not many. Our rapid communication mediums have made the hand-written letter a dinosaur, so it follows that sending out Christmas cards would soon also become an extinct practice.

My way of determining whether I'll send out a Christmas card is to base it on whether or not I received one back last year from those on last year's list. If I don't receive one  I trim that person my list faster that you trim your X mas tree (that's one tradition still holding strong). I am ambivalent about the list shrinkage because, though I find receiving a Christmas card fun and meaningful, it is an arduous task to send them out. My generation is old enough to remember as children how our parents sat at the kitchen table hour after hour sending them out. So we are imbued with the Christmas card gene. But most of us have been so spoiled by instantaneous communication devices that we now see little sense in mailing out hand written cards.

My own daughter and her generation don't give a thought to Christmas card exchange. They exchange greetings all year with...uh...texts and whatever else they do with the  cell phones and other devices they are hooked up to 24 hours a day. Convenience, speed and trendy eventually assault all tradition for "the next generation". Which brings to mind some other Christmas traditions I see are dying this very day.

Remember the days when people popped popcorn and strung it to be hung on Christmas trees as a decoration? Not there anymore! What about those Christmas carolers who used to come to our homes and serenade us with a Christmas carol tune or too. Not there anymore! Oh, and when is the last time you heard about families sitting around a music box and listening to Christmas music?  Not there anymore!

While I wrote my Christmas card greetings for my diminishing Christmas card list members I thought about which Christmas tradition would be the next one to vanish. Maybe it might be hanging mistletoe. In this age we are far too concerned with germs to kiss strangers. And there is always a climate Nazi ready to say we are "killing the planet" when we uproot mistletoe. Soon, it might not be there anymore! Or maybe we won't chop down or purchase a real Christmas tree. According to research, largely because of environmental concerns, the number of families with artificial trees is already far greater than we who have real ones. The Christmas tree soon might not be there anymore!

All traditions eventually die. Society tires of them or just replaces them with something new that is seen as better. It's not entirely good or bad to lose tradition, for to not lose them might mean progress in other areas is held back.  But for those people who value no Christmas tradition at all, I send my Christmas wish....that they all receive a traditional Christmas fruitcake this year. That should be punishment enough.