I used to hate sending cards because I felt obligated to write a personal note in each one and I am not a strong writer. I don’t know very many people who do that anymore.
We get a lot fewer cards, but almost all of them have family pictures on them. I love seeing those pictures!
I still send out about 90 cards. i kind of keep track, but rare to drop someone. I sometimes get a card from someone i thought had stopped sending because they do them rarely.
I used to always include a photo of my kids or photos of each of them and occasionally one with all of us. This year I didn’t have good photos of all three, or even of each of them separately. Plus, they are all getting older. I used a photo from one of our trips instead. It varies with my friends as some still send photos with their kid, others just a card. Definitely not as many “kid pictures” as in the past.
I do a Christmas letter with photos that goes to very few people (far away relatives and a few friends).
My DS was going through the basket of cards and commented that there were a lot fewer this year. I will continue as I love getting cards from friends around the country and from those close by. It is especially fun to get cards from the next generation with little kid photos.
Yes, we also send around 80 cards…photo card plus a year end letter. We receive fewer and fewer cards each year but my son and DIL receive about 50 cards from friends and family so the younger generation with families still send out cards.
I send Christmas cards. I always buy cards that raise money for some kind of good cause. If I’m overseas, I buy the cards there, because it’s easier to find charity cards. It’s really hard to find them in the US, but for years I bought UNICEF cards. More and more people make photo cards, if they do them at all. Totally understand why that’s practical. People’s kids change so much.
I send fewer than I used to, but still about 40 or so. I get fewer every year and it makes me a bit sad. This year, I sent cards to all of my local good friends and I’d say maybe I got two from them. These are people who usually have sent cards, people I see regularly.
Most people have the same reason: they don’t have time. A significant number of my cards go to family and friends overseas, and for them, they aren’t sending as many Christmas cards because postage is so expensive and/or they are donating money right to the charity instead of buying cards whereby a manufacture and retailer gets most of the money. It’s hard to argue with that.
I just think it takes a little time but a Christmas card looks nice and is a tiny little gift. It’s a small effort to let someone know you are thinking of them. I think I only received 20 cards this year, under half what I recieved just a few years ago.
This is the first year in a long time that I didn’t send out cards. I just had too much going on. Generally I send out 30- 50 cards. Some go to relatives with whom I communicate only at Christmas. Others go to old friends who live far away. I often get pre-printed cards, which doesn’t really bother me. I’d say most have a note attached and I like reading those. The ones that have pre-printed signatures only are almost always from businesses with whom we’ve done business.
This year, we received a letter from old friends (we went to their wedding in 1980!!). They live in NC and we don’t see them that often. I couldn’t believe how depressing it was reading the letter. I think if you’re sending out a letter, don’t make it a downer.
We get the cards printed with a photo and our names and greeting. The back of the card is blank and I always write a few sentences to personalize each card. I send out about 60 cards per year and I do enjoy doing them.
I enjoy putting together a photo card with a picture of our family taken at Thanksgiving. Sometimes I will add additional family photos - this year, I used a cute picture of our GD in a Santa hat. The company I use offers printed envelopes for free, so I take them up on that offer. I have included relatively short letters updating our lives over the past year, but at this point, not a whole lot of new is happening. So I didn’t include a letter this year. Instead, I used a light color on the back of the card so that I could write a short note by hand.
We don’t get nearly as many cards as we used to; most people we are no longer sending them. I enjoy sending them, so I will continue for the time being. I have whittled my list over the years & now only order 40 cards.
In a typical year I would send out about 70-75 cards. But this year I sent out around 120. Thanks to our daughter’s wedding and our son’s college graduation, we had some nice professional photos of two milestone events. Most of our friends were aware of our younger kid transitioning, but there were still people who weren’t aware, especially among DH’s co-workers. So I used Shutterfly to create a tri-fold card with wedding photos on one side and graduation photos on the other side. With the graduation photos I used son’s preferred name (he’s been using it for several years but hasn’t legally changed yet). So it wasn’t an explicit “announcement” of the transition but everyone who didn’t already know “got it” – except one elderly great aunt who was definitely confused by the card and called my sister-in-law to ask: “who is XXXX?” I made sure to send the cards to DH’s co-workers before the holiday party. That led to lots of interesting conversations at the party. People were surprised but everyone was supportive and praised our card.
We have never sent Christmas cards as we are not Christian. But we have for years sent out a New Year’s card wishing everyone health, peace, prosperity, etc. (much more poetic). But at least a decade ago, we switched to a digital card. ShawWife is a gifted painter – not mega-famous but galleries show and sell her work and museums show and sometimes collect her work. So we always use one of her recent paintings.
We send to our combined list – friends, her art mailing list, my business and academic contacts. We get a number of thankyous and an occasional request to be dropped from the mailed. Probably a 30:1 ratio.
We used to get many holiday cards with a one or more page saccharine exegesis on what was wonderful about the family of the recipient. All the good things and occasional bad things turned into good learning experiences. We have not gotten one of those in recent years. I do love to hear about my friends’s lives, but those notes felt, with some exceptions, like someone’s Facebook image of the family.
Forgot to mention, but we are probably sending out to 2000-3000 folks.
I’ve done a photo card and letter each year since 1987 when S1 was born. This year I’ve sent 73, down from the 120 I used to send. Almost all lost to death.
With 4 kids in 4 places, it’s tough to get a group photo, so I ask S1 for his family, D1 and her spouse, S2 and D2 I take together. Each child (plus H and me) writes their own paragraph (starting about age 5). I have saved a complete set for each child, and 2 for me.
Many friends mention each year how much they enjoy the letter. I like reading the ones we receive, plus seeing photos.
I have to ask, how do you manage the process of sending out that many cards? Are you using a business database or something?
I love the idea of each kid writing their own, but it’s a little late for that now! lol. But otherwise, we sound very similar. So far, we’ve lucked out getting a group photo, but I only have 2 and they are just now completely sprung from the nest. I can definitely foresee just doing a college. That’s what I did for the back of the card this year.
I don’t like writing and mailing cards so I don’t do it. We receive about 10. I usually do a digital photo montage card I put up on social media. Often it’s a new years card because Christmas is too stressful for me to add one more thing to do before the holiday.
S was going through the cards we received and now he wants us to send them next year. So does H.
Of course I thanked both for volunteering to do this! (as if…)
Last night, new DIL asked me if one of my nieces had moved since the wedding because her Christmas card was returned and did I have the new address? I was stunned. She was using the wedding list I had sent her last year to send out Christmas cards. Man, she IS a keeper. 
We use benchmark email, which is where we set up ShawWife’s initial mailing list years ago. But, I suspect that mailchimp might be better. I believe that it would be hard to just send emails out from Gmail or Apple Mail in bulk. But I’m no expert.
You are talking about marketing, vs sending to friends, clearly.
Both personal and business. ShawWife is incredibly social. In part because of her, we have a lot of friends and entertain a lot. She will have a very large funeral. I don’t have her social genes but am reasonably well-known in my field and have lots of folks who are not potential clients, but with whom I keep in touch (e.g., we met a US Congressman and his wife in airline lounge and have kept in touch since then – not friends but not business prospects either). So those are blurry. Not really marketing but not close friends. Then there are the folks on her art mailing list or my list of current, past and prospective clients. So I’d say a mix of personal, direct business (hers and mine), and general contacts.
Nope, not in over 8 years. Wife was the driving force behind them, so when she stopped it ended. She does send a card of sorts over Facebook. We still get about 20-30 from the holdouts who don’t use social media much.