I just wish people would stop sending me Christmas cards

I have had plenty of council house digs made at me in my time - but never working class ones.

My mum speaks five languages. She was a single parent. Working class

I would never use working class as a slur. Working class people can do well and do you know what - when I was growing up in the 80s not once did any friend who's family had more money than mine ever make me feel bad for being working class. No one cared

No one gave a shiny shit.

I hate them too. I have ADHD, and one of the things I just can't cope with is having to organise and send Christmas cards. I feel so pressured to return them, but I just can't keep on top of it. Particularly any that need posting. I don't mind getting them and appreciate the gesture (though privately think they are pointless), I just can't handle the expectation of sending one back.

Then there's the weird Christmas card hierarchy. Close family members need special ones choosing. Neighbours need a cheap pack of generic ones. Family ones go above the fireplace, neighbour ones are resigned to less seen window sill 😂

I usually now just throw a social media status out saying I'm donating £15 to charity instead. I did WWF last year!

I'm not anti-cards generally. I send things like birthday cards and enjoy decorating the envelope and writing long messages. I can deal with one card at once. I just hate Christmas cards!

@Enigma54 people are very strange...maybe your brother just can't find any words let alone the right ones.
Maybe at times a card and a one line message is better than nothing?
Take care of yourself.

Again, perfectly expresses my opinion too

Everyone is different 🤷‍♀️ I’ve just put the ones we’ve received on the wall tonight and I give them to friends and family but I always write nice messages in them not just to and from whoever 🤷‍♀️

Totally agree 💯

This thread has made me think. Back in the day ( 80’s and 90’s) I used to send many cards and received lots back. I was in touch with most of the people and we were likely friends. Postage was much cheaper too!

Now, I’m in my 50’s. I’ve sent 6 cards; 5 to family and 1 to my old cleaning supervisor who I worked for as a student.

I have cancer and my brother has hardly got in touch with me since my life was turned upside down. I am so upset, but accept I can’t change things. I sent him a card ( because he’s family). He sent me a short message, thanking me for the card and then asked for my bank details to send Christmas money. I don’t want any Christmas money or anything from him. Why would he want to send money when he’s not once asked me how I am? How chemo has gone etc. This could be my last Christmas. I’m just focused on my immediate family and young adult kids.

I used to love sending and receiving cards, now I’m very selective..

I buy about 30 cards...dog rescue charity with dogs rehomed during the year...arty ones...and some sort of medieval religious looking ones . They are all from charities.
And the relation specific working class ones obviously.

Yes I also buy them for the designs. I tend to like ones with houses on, and perhaps birds, or something like a historical card design, or a nice print. I really like matching the card to the recipient and choosing one because I know they’d like it. I have an elderly relative who especially likes cards with robins on, so I look out every year for a nice one. For 20-30 people in total, it doesn’t take me ages, I enjoy it, and I know the recipients appreciate it because they say so to me!

😆 I wouldn’t dare to send a Christmas card to a bunch of Scrooges with affronted sucked-lemon faces on at the very thought of the horror of receiving a small folded piece of recyclable paper product in the post 😂

I do enjoy writing Christmas cards. And receiving too. I also like the variety of designs and they look so pretty too.
Am I the only one who doesn't choose cards because of a specific charity and only decides based on how nice the cards are? In fact the incidental charity 'donation' doesn't much register for me.
I just want to buy what I think it is a nice card which I think it would be appropriate for the recipient.

I'm so sad people are so mean and lazy they just send an email or text. I love sending and receiving cards. They are little works of art in themselves. I have a neighbour who paints a landscape and sends that as a card every year. A relative is a card designer. Another makes all her cards. I think we are losing a little bit more of tradition every year, and it saddens me.

Yes to the gift tags!

One of my favourite Christmas memories ever is of making tags out of old Christmas cards as a child. We’d do them at Brownies with pinking shears, a hole punch and baker’s twine and sell them for 10p for ten for charity (1980s prices 😂) I have rarely enjoyed any Christmas activity as an adult as much as that, and it was a pleasure surpassing any number of expensive contemporary light trails with marshmallows or whatever.

Sometimes the simple things are just nicer. And better a Christmas card than a text you never get around to sending.

Exactly!

I love writing cards, sending and receiving. I enjoy putting them up in the house and I make tags out of them for next year when I take them down. If someone told me that they didn’t want one I’d stop but I really don’t see the harm in them. There are a lot worse things going on right now. If anybody doesn’t want to send them they don’t have to.

Yeah, the OP has shown her true colours rapidly with that comment.

Also @iCod What on earth is wrong with being working class? Why do you say it in a derogatory and sneering manner? WTAF is wrong with 'Dear Mum At Christmas' on a card?

Oh dear. You've embarrassed yourself. 😬 And the whole premise of your thread has gone out of the window.

Didn't you send out change of address cards (yep, heaven forbid, more cards lol!) @Namechange2211 or emails/texts/whatever notifying people you'd moved?

We've moved house five times in the past eighteen years and have always let friends/family know our new address. These moves have been across the UK, often a couple of hundred miles or more. As a result we've made some new friends, most of whom it's not practical logistically to see from one year to the next and many of whom don't do WhatsApp or faceache (I don't do the latter either).

Also, we both have (only a handful now, sadly) elderly relatives who also live much too far for us to visit regularly. They seem to really appreciate the thought and care that goes into choosing, writing and sending Christmas cards, so even if all our other friends/family told us to stop bothering, we'd still send to the elderly relatives.

My gran was housebound for the last ten years of her life and and she used to keep in touch with a relative that lived a long distance away. He was in his 90s and he used to send her a card and a letter at Christmas. They kept in touch at other times too but some people like getting cards for reasons - because they can't get out and see people anymore

Next year I'm going to make a personalised working class card - a photo of me standing outside the football team I support (provincial club in the west of Scotland)

I'll personalise it with fuck you to all my horrible neighbours (too many)

(even though I'm working class I now have a council house in quite a so called posh area of my home town)

And have a nice Christmas to the ones that are nice

I think it could catch on and make me a fortune

I'll also do an e card version to save the planet

Agree. We should just donate the money to charity.

Just tell people you don't want them. I'd appreciate if someone I was sending them to just said this and saved me the stamp money.

Don’t you have any older relatives/friends/teachers/colleagues/mentors who live around the country and/or who you can’t easily meet up with and don’t ring but still like to exchange news with and ask how they are once a year?

If you don’t, can you at least imagine that other people do? Why do you assume there isn’t a good reason and we’re all idiots for sending them?

I don’t ever meet up with an old tutor from university who mentored me, and who retired to live across the country where I never have time to go, and neither am I likely to ring or text her, but I know she still really appreciates a card at Christmas with my news on. I have relatives and relatives in law who like to hear how my DD is getting on, and who send her money occasionally, but who aren’t my friends, and who I’d never otherwise meet up with or message. I know older, quite distant relatives who’ve been bereaved this year, and I’m not going to send them a cheery text suggesting going to the pub from half the country away, and I know they don’t want a phone call, but I have still sent them a card with a message saying I’m thinking of them at Christmas. I send DD’s music teacher a card saying thank you for her support with a small gift; I send my boss at work a card because he and his wife always make a point of sending one personally written to everyone in the organisation; I send a card every Christmas to the people who I rehomed my cat from, with a message and a photo saying how she is. I’m not going to meet up with any of them and none of them are my “mates”: a card is exactly the right thing.

I like sending them all out. A family friend sent them for the first time this year after his wife died… and I’m glad he will receive mine in return and know that he is loved. My wider family exchange them, my neighbours, my husbands elderly relatives and on and on in a wide net of connection and community.

I think it’s beautiful.

I live in the south of Ireland. I have several friends in East Anglia...it's a couple of years since I was there. So we don't meet up often. They are welcome here any time. But Christmas cards are a handy way to keep in touch until the next time. (Yes I know what's app is available).

If the only thing they do to show they care if I live or die is send a card once a year, I’m not sure they care all that much. There are better ways of showing that and if they are my friends we’ll have done things for each other regularly. The card is neither here nor there.

But I send cards to people who don’t have or don’t really use email and who I don’t meet up with maybe for years at a time. Do I not send a card to great aunt Mildred in Scotland just because I don’t have the chance to see her for years at a time and she’s too deaf to talk by phone? (I do actually have a deaf Scottish great aunt Mildred, as it happens, so that isn’t hypothetical!) I send cards to people I’m not in touch with more informally precisely because it’s the kind of thing they like.

You might as well say “I don’t see the point of writing letters now we have email”. But some people like to write and send a letter precisely because it isn’t text or email. It’s the same thing with cards. You think they’re pointless, but plenty more people think differently and have their own reasons why.

Simply going on a “oh they’re pointless” jag in a sneery way (as a lot of this thread demonstrates, I don’t mean you direct here @phoenixrosehere but a lot of the posters), is just really a way of some people being performatively superior about other people’s choices. They’re not clubbing baby seals to death; they’re spending a bit of money sending a festive card. What a whingefest on this thread, honestly!

On the scale of things to be annoyed about, @iCod OP, you’ve got to have a charmed life if Christmas cards annoy you that much. Getting a few cards when I don’t really get the point of them wouldn’t even register on my scale of irritants in life, to be honest.