What style is your familiy's christmas cards?

[UbiCaritas]

How many people still send snail mail Christmas cards?

We do! I enjoy sending them, but I LOVE receiving them and hanging them up around the living room.

I generally send ones with some sort of religious artwork (read: the nicest I can find at half-price books, or the ones on a very good after-Christmas sale), and enclose a pic of the kiddo.

 

[Sy_Noe]

I receive less cards it seems with each passing yr. I haven’t received even one yet. I still send though. Less than yrs gone by due to deaths and whatnot but in recent yrs I’ve been sending more than I receive. I have family from whom I haven’t received in 10 yrs. I don’t know maybe I’m just not thought of enough to be on their list. But I do think it is becoming a dying tradition. Due to any number of reasons I suppose. Social media, text messaging, email, the cost of cards and postage, people not finding the time.

But this yr the card I’m sending is Peace on Earth. I bought them at the Dollar Store for well, $1/box. They are actually quite nice. The cards and envelopes are a heavier wt and less flimsy than cards I’ve purchased there in previous yrs. But since none of you are on my list that I know of, to each of you, Peace on Earth and may peace be your gift this season and throughout the new yr.

 

[Sy_Noe]

I send religious Christmas cards to religious folks and relatives and send cards with winter scenes to people who aren’t religious.

I’ve done that sometimes in the past as well.

 

[pianistclare]

Tip:
Cut the front picture away from the rest of the card (along the fold)
Hole punch the top left corner, and you have a great looking RELIGIOUS gift tag.
Most of the cards have a very small Scripture verse on the inside (the back of the picture) or it’s simply blank, and if the sender did not write there, you can write in TO & FROM easily.

 

[UbiCaritas]

Tip:
Cut the front picture away from the rest of the card (along the fold)
Hole punch the top left corner, and you have a great looking RELIGIOUS gift tag.
Most of the cards have a very small Scripture verse on the inside (the back of the picture) or it’s simply blank, and if the sender did not write there, you can write in TO & FROM easily.

Oooooh, nice idea!

You can also take the front of a Christmas card, like above, and glue it to a lunch-sized paper bag before filling it with Christmas cookies; that’s what we did when I was a kid. Tie off the top with some Christmas ribbon, and you have a very pretty container!

 

[pianistclare]

Oooooh, nice idea!

You can also take the front of a Christmas card, like above, and glue it to a lunch-sized paper bag before filling it with Christmas cookies; that’s what we did when I was a kid. Tie off the top with some Christmas ribbon, and you have a very pretty container!

Yeah, I never buy tags. The best part is they are big enough to write a message too!

 

[gardenswithkids]

We send Christmas greetings on photo cards of either the children or whole family.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

I receive less cards it seems with each passing yr. I haven’t received even one yet. I still send though. Less than yrs gone by due to deaths and whatnot but in recent yrs I’ve been sending more than I receive. I have family from whom I haven’t received in 10 yrs. I don’t know maybe I’m just not thought of enough to be on their list. But I do think it is becoming a dying tradition. Due to any number of reasons I suppose. Social media, text messaging, email, the cost of cards and postage, people not finding the time.

But this yr the card I’m sending is Peace on Earth. I bought them at the Dollar Store for well, $1/box. They are actually quite nice. The cards and envelopes are a heavier wt and less flimsy than cards I’ve purchased there in previous yrs. But since none of you are on my list that I know of, to each of you, Peace on Earth and may peace be your gift this season and throughout the new yr.

I used to get fewer and fewer, too, until I started teaching. This year I’ve gotten about 70 already, and gifts of mostly candy of some kind of cookies. One girl gave me a box of 48 “Cheryl’s Cookies.” One can tell premium ingredients were used, and the cookies are nice and soft, but they are SO HUGE and SO SWEET, and I don’t know when I’ll ever have enough visitors to use up all of them. And that’s not the only “food gift” I’ve received. I’m 32, but I’m only 4’11" and weigh about 95 lbs. I’m going to have to share a LOT of these goodies with the other professors, which is fine. My students know I’m French, so several gave me unbaked pain au chocolat from a local bakery, which is great. I can freeze them. I’m happy to be remembered, but if I ate all the kids are giving me, I’d be the size of a baby elephant! LOL It’s more fun to share anyway.

Peace on Earth to you, too, Sy, and your family, and to all here.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Tip:
Cut the front picture away from the rest of the card (along the fold)
Hole punch the top left corner, and you have a great looking RELIGIOUS gift tag.
Most of the cards have a very small Scripture verse on the inside (the back of the picture) or it’s simply blank, and if the sender did not write there, you can write in TO & FROM easily.

Great idea! The tags I’ve purchased are barely large enough to get one name written!

A Blessed Christmas, Clare. I play violin, if we ever met, we could play a Christmas duet!

 

[ela2]

We send religious cards, we get mostly family pictures back.

 

[ThyKingdomCome]

We don’t have a very big list of who we send cards to, and there are even fewer people who send us cards. Those we send to are mostly family, who generally express the desire for more pictures of our kids than we provide, and who wish to see us more than they do. So we know they like to get the cards with the pictures. In fact, I can’t get it together to do formal portraits of my kids and they don’t get school portraits, so often the Christmas picture is the only one that the family members receive (when all of the other kids in the family are providing professional portraits). There are a few out of town friends who enjoy seeing the passage of time in our family, just like I enjoy seeing it in the friends who send pictures to us.

For a while, I really resisted the picture card. I felt like others, that the meaning of Christmas should be emphasized, and that the personal touch was important. I would buy meaningful religious cards, write personal handwritten sentiments in them, and I would insert a photo in the cards of the people who I thought might like a photo. I did this long past the point that most families with kids had switched. Then I gave up. The fact was, people weren’t sending cards back to us, and it was becoming torturous for me. My “personal messages” were trite and useless, and there really wasn’t anything to say. It felt just as fake to me as anything else. Really, if I already was keeping in touch with the people, there wasn’t a need to say anything, and if I wasn’t in touch with them, there wasn’t much they would care to hear. But I felt either an obligation to send a card (you know, Aunts and Uncles etc…), or had an interest in maintaining a thread of contact.

So now, I go online and find a religious themed picture card, print it with a picture of my family on it, and call it a day. So much less stressful, and from what I hear, most people who receive them are happy with them. When my kids are grown, I will probably go back to sending regular cards. Although I will say that there are a couple of older couples who send pictures of their children and grandchildren, and I really love seeing those as well - so who knows?

I do love getting both kinds of cards. I do not enjoy Christmas cards that aren’t about Christmas, but as someone said, I try to appreciate the well wishes that are sent even so.

 

[Sy_Noe]

I used to get fewer and fewer, too, until I started teaching. This year I’ve gotten about 70 already, and gifts of mostly candy of some kind of cookies. One girl gave me a box of 48 “Cheryl’s Cookies.” One can tell premium ingredients were used, and the cookies are nice and soft, but they are SO HUGE and SO SWEET, and I don’t know when I’ll ever have enough visitors to use up all of them. And that’s not the only “food gift” I’ve received. I’m 32, but I’m only 4’11" and weigh about 95 lbs. I’m going to have to share a LOT of these goodies with the other professors, which is fine. My students know I’m French, so several gave me unbaked pain au chocolat from a local bakery, which is great. I can freeze them. I’m happy to be remembered, but if I ate all the kids are giving me, I’d be the size of a baby elephant! LOL It’s more fun to share anyway.

Peace on Earth to you, too, Sy, and your family, and to all here.

Thank you Lily and I hear ya. I just informed my family elves today to limit the candy Santa puts into my stocking.

 

[AClaire11]

Everyone in my family sends the picture kind. My husband and I don’t send out cards yet, but we’d probably either do the same or use my stationery. The majority of my family is completely lapsed and I would feel very uncomfortable sending a very religious card to my sister, for example, who is now a Buddhist.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

We send out a religious card each year. For a long time we only sent the nice religious cards to close family and then sent whatever cheap, funny, secular cards we were able to find in the clearance bins the year before to everyone else, but I finally made an executive decision and started sending the religious cards to everyone. It’s Christmas, for Pete’s sake! If you’re going to be offended by a religious card on Christmas, let me know and I’ll take you off my list.

This is the first year in a long time that I’ve added names to our Christmas card list. We were talking to our daughters about how many cards we send out last night. The first few years we were married we sent cards to all our family and friends, most of our coworkers and everyone who was at our wedding. It was over 150 cards, which is why we relied on the clearance bins each year. We finally cut back when we realized that we only got about 1/3 that in return and a lot of the people we were sending them to were friends of our parents we didn’t actually know and were only on our list because of our wedding. Thanks to family issues we’ve cut our list back by another 50% or so over the last few years. Getting to add a couple names this year felt pretty good. Unfortunately, the overall number of cards we sent dropped thanks to a couple deaths and a family member who moved without telling anyone and now won’t give out his address.

We get our share of the summer vacation picture cards. I try to group those together on our card holder. I don’t like them because you can’t tell they’re Christmas cards.

One thing we no longer get are the family journal/update cards. These are the cards that either include a separate sheet updating everyone on what the family has been doing over the past year, or are on fancy stationery and take the place of an actual card. As much as some of them could annoy me in the past, now that nobody takes the time to do them anymore, I really miss them.

We’ve gotten very few cards so far this year and seem to be on track for our fewest cards ever. Of the handful we’ve received, it struck me that everyone seems to have cut back on their Christmas card budget this year. My one old friend who always sends out very nice, elaborate cards sent a half-sized generic cards. The others…just aren’t what I expected from the people who sent them. I’m not complaining since I’m always looking to save a few pennies this time of year, but these have been really out of the ordinary, and only one card so far has been religious.

 

[Lily_Bernans]

Thank you Lily and I hear ya. I just informed my family elves today to limit the candy Santa puts into my stocking.

I did give in to that big box of cookies last night, and I think I ate the “perfect cookie,” at least for me.

If you don’t like gingerbread, you wouldn’t like it, but it was big, soft, and smelled of the holidays. Tiny pieces of candied ginger were in the cookie. It was frosted with the most delicious Italian buttercream frosting, which might be too sweet for some, but at least it wasn’t a mile high. I have no reason to believe that the other varieties won’t be equally as delicious. I’m going to start giving them away today. I cannot afford to gain weight!

 

[Lily_Bernans]

We send out a religious card each year. For a long time we only sent the nice religious cards to close family and then sent whatever cheap, funny, secular cards we were able to find in the clearance bins the year before to everyone else, but I finally made an executive decision and started sending the religious cards to everyone. It’s Christmas, for Pete’s sake! If you’re going to be offended by a religious card on Christmas, let me know and I’ll take you off my list.

This is the first year in a long time that I’ve added names to our Christmas card list. We were talking to our daughters about how many cards we send out last night. The first few years we were married we sent cards to all our family and friends, most of our coworkers and everyone who was at our wedding. It was over 150 cards, which is why we relied on the clearance bins each year. We finally cut back when we realized that we only got about 1/3 that in return and a lot of the people we were sending them to were friends of our parents we didn’t actually know and were only on our list because of our wedding. Thanks to family issues we’ve cut our list back by another 50% or so over the last few years. Getting to add a couple names this year felt pretty good. Unfortunately, the overall number of cards we sent dropped thanks to a couple deaths and a family member who moved without telling anyone and now won’t give out his address.

We get our share of the summer vacation picture cards. I try to group those together on our card holder. I don’t like them because you can’t tell they’re Christmas cards.

One thing we no longer get are the family journal/update cards. These are the cards that either include a separate sheet updating everyone on what the family has been doing over the past year, or are on fancy stationery and take the place of an actual card. As much as some of them could annoy me in the past, now that nobody takes the time to do them anymore, I really miss them.

We’ve gotten very few cards so far this year and seem to be on track for our fewest cards ever. Of the handful we’ve received, it struck me that everyone seems to have cut back on their Christmas card budget this year. My one old friend who always sends out very nice, elaborate cards sent a half-sized generic cards. The others…just aren’t what I expected from the people who sent them. I’m not complaining since I’m always looking to save a few pennies this time of year, but these have been really out of the ordinary, and only one card so far has been religious.

I stick with the religious cards since this is a religious holiday, but I have to admit that some with winter scenes are very beautiful.

 

[Graceful_Lamb]

This year, I bought Christmas cards at the dollar store. Also, we have received many cards in the mail from organizations looking for donations, so I’m using them, too. Some of the cards are religious and some are not. I send the religious ones to those who I know are religious and send the more secular ones to those who are not so religious.