Least Favorite Style of Holiday Cards
 

Yes, I said "Holiday". Seems that sending a Christmas cards is akin to sending tracts these days. But surely there's one style that you hate. Let's hear about it/they.

Holiday letters typed in size 4 font. Your life isn't that freakin' interesting. Cards with loose glitter or confetti inside. I didn't really want to sweep again. Updates about your twenty-something kids. Shouldn't they send out their own cards at this point?

OMG...Yes to all of the above!

At first I want to say the wacky holiday letters, but at the same time they provide SO much amusement.

I hate it when people send cards that are so old that they've yellowed. Way to show off your garage sale purchase! (and it's not like they're old, beautiful cards. We're talking cheap back when they were new)

I hate to receive just a card with a signature....and especially an illegible signaturre.

I love Christmas newsletters. Hate writing them, but love reading them. They're usually from friends and family members that we rarely see anymore. And yes, I do want to know about what their 20-something and 30-something and even 40-something kids are up to, because we knew them when they were born but don't get cards from them.
Hardly anybody sends Christmas cards anymore, anyway. It's Dec. 5 and I've received 1. Ten years ago I would have received 10 or 15 by now.

But...it's all good. We keep up on Facebook now.:D

Ditto, AnchorAlumna!

I haven't sent mine yet because I only had two leftover from last year, so I had to go buy more.

I'm also waiting on my new address labels to come.

I'm also procrastinating and will probably send them out in like 2 weeks.

I like the card with a quick note and a signature. The point is the pretty card. Mine get sent out tomorrow. Last year I didn't start getting mine back until less than a week before Christmas, and I got more than 30...thanks to FB.

Seventy-five percent of the cards I get are of the family picture or kids' picture variety. I actually enjoy seeing how big the kids are getting, especially from people I don't see or talk to much anymore.

I don't seem to get the holiday letters, but I know of them. If anyone cares to share them here for sport, I'd read!!

Now to answer the question posed: My least favorite are the ones that people get printed up - with their names already printed, so they don't have to take the two minutes to sign their names. They even get the envelopes printed (not a mail-merged sticky printed out on the computer, which I have done before) with the complete "to" and "from" addresses.

I don't send cards anymore because it was getting really expensive (this was before Facebook). I was sending over 180 cards out (about 75% family). With the postage now sitting at 44 cents ($79.20), and cards coming maybe 20 to a pack at $10 each ($90) - it's now lot of money. I feel bad, but then again, I rarely receive more than 20-30 cards a year, despite sending so many out. I know it's not about that, but that extra expense, and the time writing out every card and envelope (I always used a red or green felt tip pen and wrote in really nice cursive) takes its toll on my carpal tunnel syndrome. It usually took a good three weeks to get all my cards done (no, hubby didn't help, lol, he has interesting handwriting).

It's too bad, because it was a lot of fun. Maybe if the economy gets better, I'll return to the practice in a year or two, because I enjoy the process. With Facebook, however, I can't imagine how many more cards I would be sending out.:o

Okay, I don't mind the Christmas letter, if it's done well. One of my chapter sister's husband always does theirs to either "The Night Before Christmas" or "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" - really cute.

Hate the glitter, spangles, and other stuff that make me bring out the vacuum.

Usually like the photo ones, if there's a note or whatever on the back, until the one I got last year. It showed the sender's son and daughter in a hot tub together, and if I didn't know they were brother & sister, I would have sworn it was an engagement photo. Seriously, as the daughter is very well endowed, I really questioned that this very picture was the one they wanted to use as "Christmas".

^^^Sometimes I wonder about people's taste...

I love getting Christmas letters and reading about our family friends who we never get to see anymore. I was born in MN and rarely see anyone my family knew from there so I love hearing about their year and what's going on. My Mom writes one and always includes me and probably always will. She sends letters to people I never would so that's the only way they'd hear about my year.

I HATE when people use the letter as an excuse to brag about their kids. I get that it's fun to talk about the kids and that's fine. But I hate when people go on and on and on. We get one of those a year and it always makes me laugh in a sad way.

This.

And I like the ones that tell what people have been up to.
I have a lot of family in Kentucky & so I don't see them often.
For people who are close to me, the family picture thing on a printed card is cute too.

That said, I don't send out my own Christmas cards. I'm still in college and it's an expense I don't need right now. My mom still includes me anyways.
I think that I will probably only start sending my own out once I am married.

Add me to the list of glitter haters. I also get peeved when people send cards, especially those picture cards, with no actual written note.

My mother is a Christmas Card Nazi - I one day aspire to be on her level.

My family gets a kick out of those. My step-dad will usually read it aloud for all of us and insert his own sarcastic commentary. It's pretty freaking funny.

We have a family member who sends out a letter every year that is generally questionable.

One year, he compared his grown daughter's divorce that year to the amputation of a gangrenous limb.

Would that I were kidding.

I like the holiday letters too because they help me keep up on what's going on in their lives. I do a holiday letter but it only goes to the people who I know care about what my kids are doing... like aunts and uncles, my mom's cousins, my cousins, and my best friends from grade school. I send out about 40 cards and the holiday letter goes into maybe half of those.

I also don't like when everything is pre-printed. There are a few people who aren't on Facebook and who don't write anything extra who I would really like to hear more from. The glitter/confetti ones are definitely annoying.

When it comes to sending out weird/inappropriate Christmas cards, my stepmom takes the cake.

Last year, she sent this card:

http://h50.us/~churchg2/images/53215c.jpg

... which contained a printed poem in it about "giving a little Jesus" this Christmas. I'm sure you could probably find the poem online if you Googled it. I'm not very religious, and I understand that she is... but is it me? Is this not weird? What I loved most is that she wrote in my name above the poem, and then signed underneath it "Love Dad and Stepmom" (using her actual name, which I won't post here). Nothing else. I'd hate to see what they did for people who aren't their children..

Worse than receiving updates about the twenty-something kids... receiving one of those picture cards with the twenty-something kids on it. I don't see or talk to my dad and stepmom much, and yet this year, they sent a card with a picture of the two of them and me and my brother together.. from my brother's basic training graduation. We're both in our mid-to-late twenties, and besides that, I'm sending out my own Christmas cards this year.

This is something that you do when your kids are 4 and 6.. Not 24 and 26...

THANK YOU!! An update is not the same as a resume. "Susie is still enjoying her dance involvement" is an update. "Susie placed fourth in the statewide snowflake competition and won the trophy for Best Pirouette and first runner-up in Arabesque technique" is NOT an update, it's bragging. Also, no one cares.

Ditto the contrast between "Billy is looking forward to enrolling at Duke next fall" and "Billy had such a tough time deciding between Duke, Dartmouth, Georgetown, and a full scholarship at Vanderbilt that blah blah blah..." In brief, we're so blessed, and you're not.
________
Avandia attorney

That's part of the reasons I hate those letters, they're so show-offy and competitive.

Also, who cares if little Jimmy got braces or had a difficult time adjusting to middle school? And btw, I can see the braces in the picture, so really, leave the poor kid to his braces hell.

Have any of you read the Holiday Newsletter from David Sedaris' Holidays on Ice?

He also reads it in an episode of This American Life. It's episode #87, "A Very Special Sedaris Christmas."

It's the second story AFTER Ira's intro. Starts at roughly 14:50.