When we put up the Christmas tree on Sunday, the kids gave me a hard time for, once again, considering not sending Christmas cards. I pointed to a bag full of untouched cards and said, “Knock yourself out.” I said that Twitter killed my Christmas cards two years ago, and I still feel the same way:
My Christmas cards are sitting in a bag inside my closet. Don’t bother looking for one in your mailbox this year. Or, very likely, any year. Twitter killed my Christmas cards, and I’m not sure that I care.
The cards in my closet are actually from last Christmastime, when, upon sitting down to fill them out, I drew a blank. What do you say after a year of battling cancer? “Hello, friends and family. We’re not sure yet if the chemo and radiation worked or if I’m going to need a bone marrow transplant in January…Season’s Greetings!”
So I put the cards away.
But this year we know that the cancer treatments worked. I’m in remission, and I’ve got a curly mop of hair on my head. And yet, I still have no desire to fill out my cards. After a year’s worth of tweeting and blogging and uploading and sharing, simply writing “Happy Holidays” on a card, especially one designed by someone else, seems woefully inadequate. It seems so 20th century.
And it appears that other folks feel the same way. We’ve received fewer holiday cards this year, though that might be a function of the down economy more than anything else. Or maybe people struck us off their lists last year after I quit sending Christmas cards. It’s hard to know. I mean, it’s not like they clicked “Stop following” or “Remove from friends.” Snail mail is so one-way.
All I know is that this year, I wrote more than 150 blog entries at Good Housekeeping.com, and another 200-plus others on my own web site I produced nearly 500 tweets on Twitter and I commented on other people’s blogs, tweets and status lines all year long. As a result, I feel like I’ve said pretty much all there is to say about 2008, some of it in just 140 characters.
Meanwhile, I was friended or followed by all sorts of people, including my next door neighbor, a kid I went to summer camp with back in 1980 and my mother. And I followed and friended them back. I kept in touch all year long, not just in December.
Though I appreciate the lovely holiday cards some folks have mailed to me, I read them and thought I know. I know because I saw their vacation photos on Facebook, and I read their funny tweets from their college reunions, and I caught up on their blogs. I know, because social media has made us all more, well, social – except, perhaps, when it comes to Christmas cards.
So, in lieu of paper holiday cards delivered through rain, sleet or gloom of night by the U.S. Postal Service, I will wish everyone happy holidays in true Twitter fashion:
@everyone Twitter killed my holiday cards, but not my spirit. So Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good byte!
Share, share: Are you sending out holiday cards this year?
I think I’m only going to send out cards to those people on my list who aren’t my friends on Facebook. Everybody else already knows what’s been going on in my life.
I also subscribe to my pastor’s reasoning that Christmas lasts from Christmas (December 25) through either Epiphany (January 6) or the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord (a week later), and I have all that time to get my cards out without being late.
First of all, congrats on kicking cancer’s butt, Jen.
To answer your question: Yes, we are sending Christmas cards this year. Yet I see your point. In writing our holiday letter, guess what I used to jog my memory on the year’s happenings? That’s right — my Facebook updates. How insane to mail people a printed version of mini events they’ve been reading all year long. Yet I can’t stop myself. I’m a sucker for the gorgeous family photo and the yummy paper. Feels like the only real bonafide holiday greetings anymore.