Holiday Cards - why?
For the past 15 odd years, my wife and I have diligently designed, created and posted holiday cards to our family and friends. It started the year we got married and has snowballed a bit since we had kids. Every year around September we started having conversations like this:
Me: "Do you think we should start our card for this year?"
She: "I told you that last week - you were going to start it..."
Me: "Right. Do you have any idea what you want to do?"
She: "YOU are the creative one - you had all these great ideas last week when we were out drinking..."
You get the picture.
I say holiday because we have a number of Jewish friends and a number that don't acknowledge religion or holidays. Making a non-denominational card was the thing to do. The first few years they were made by hand and posted by hand. That led to store-bought cards, followed by spreadsheets with Avery labels and ultimately to electronic cards designed online and the iTunes store. When our son was born in 1999 that really threw a spanner in the works. Now I had to be creative AND funny AND endearing AND adorable AND timely. Needless to say it took a lot of effort. The first baby year saw a 4x6 tipped into a Pottery Barn card. Genius in its simplicity.
The second year is below:
As the years progressed and we had a daughter too, the pictures became more involved, the text wittier and wittier until this year.
This year we decided that we would not send out cards.
Not because we are cheap, not because we don't care. We are not cheap and we do care.
It is simply too much work and expense for something that is tossed out a week or two later. Personally I get a kick out of saving family cards and looking at them years later. I am not going to say we are popular - but thanks to family, school, work, sports, the band etc. our list grows every year. Its not a like a wedding invitation list (which begat our original list) where there are levels of friendship. We send cards to everyone we know - that is simply lots of people. We used to send them to X people and keep a number of extras aside for those people we forgot about (or whose addresses we could not locate) and send them out one by one. With every new computer came the inevitable search for "The List."
Enough I say! I communicate with a staggering percentage of that list by email as it is. If and when we decide to do a "card" this year - it will be electronic.
And you can be damn sure it will be adorable.
Me: "Do you think we should start our card for this year?"
She: "I told you that last week - you were going to start it..."
Me: "Right. Do you have any idea what you want to do?"
She: "YOU are the creative one - you had all these great ideas last week when we were out drinking..."
You get the picture.
I say holiday because we have a number of Jewish friends and a number that don't acknowledge religion or holidays. Making a non-denominational card was the thing to do. The first few years they were made by hand and posted by hand. That led to store-bought cards, followed by spreadsheets with Avery labels and ultimately to electronic cards designed online and the iTunes store. When our son was born in 1999 that really threw a spanner in the works. Now I had to be creative AND funny AND endearing AND adorable AND timely. Needless to say it took a lot of effort. The first baby year saw a 4x6 tipped into a Pottery Barn card. Genius in its simplicity.
The second year is below:
As the years progressed and we had a daughter too, the pictures became more involved, the text wittier and wittier until this year.
This year we decided that we would not send out cards.
Not because we are cheap, not because we don't care. We are not cheap and we do care.
It is simply too much work and expense for something that is tossed out a week or two later. Personally I get a kick out of saving family cards and looking at them years later. I am not going to say we are popular - but thanks to family, school, work, sports, the band etc. our list grows every year. Its not a like a wedding invitation list (which begat our original list) where there are levels of friendship. We send cards to everyone we know - that is simply lots of people. We used to send them to X people and keep a number of extras aside for those people we forgot about (or whose addresses we could not locate) and send them out one by one. With every new computer came the inevitable search for "The List."
Enough I say! I communicate with a staggering percentage of that list by email as it is. If and when we decide to do a "card" this year - it will be electronic.
And you can be damn sure it will be adorable.
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