To be pissed off with people saying 'I am not sending any Christmas card this year, I am donating the money to charity.'

[chrisinthesun]

Just admit you can't be arsed to send any.

And is the charity you are supposedly donating to, going to go wild about the 1.99p it would have cost for a box/pack of 50 Christmas cards? 🙄

I suppose some people will come on here and say they send at least 2 dozen cards out by post/abroad etc, and that costs them £50-60 in postage, but most people don't do this. Most people just send them to neighbours, close family, acquaintances, and work colleagues.

As I said, just admit you can't be arsed, and bore off with the sanctimonious 'I am not giving out any Christmas cards this year, I am giving the money to charity' line. (I bet most people who say this, don't even give anything to charity 'instead of sending out Christmas cards.')

Just do it - if you MUST - but why mention it?

You’ve done nothing but bang in about it for four pages.

If the thread is boring you, DO feel free to leave the thread.

And I have been banging on for SEVEN pages. Do keep up darling.

You could equally easily leave the thread. After all, you weren’t even interested enough to read the posts in full - and made a right idiot of yourself in the process.

Thanks OP, I'm glad someone said it at last !

I post on Facebook every year that I am grateful for having lots of friends and as I'm not sending Xmas cards I shall be spending the Xmas card money on wine 😜

Thanks tooearlyfordecorations I think a lot of people probably think it LOL!

and bluebells LOL. Yeah just admit you are spending the money on wne!

Whoops WINE not WNE.

I have had 2 glasses. Can you tell? LOL.

I don't have time for Xmas cards and to be honest I hate cards. We donate £30-50 to charity instead. I tell people purely so they don't think I have forgotten them.

I haven't sent any for years - such a waste of precious resources. I don't make a charity donation in lieu either.

I make donations all year round.

Who the fudge is having this conversation IN SEPTEMBER?

Chrisinthesun,

clearly you have life sussed, good for you.

You see no point in :
a) communicating in the normal / established form of Christmas Card writing, which pleases any folk , especially the elderly in the community , or
b) donating to charity, instead of writing such cards:

instead you take pleasure in SEPTEMBER in worrying about peoples choices and revellling in taking the piss out of ones you don't particularly agree with.

sorry typo because you're bound to pick up on it being a september jobsworth, should say 'many not any'.

It's not a mutually exclusive thing- sending Christmas cards doesn't stop you from also giving money to charity. It's a choice about how you split your Christmas budget. You could avoid buying anything at all for Christmas, and give all the money saved to charity, but nobody ever posts anything about not buying a bottle of Baileys and a metric ton of After 8s so they can give the money saved to charity- it's not really fair to use the charity argument to portray card-senders as some kind of Dickensian figure taking food from the poor.

Equally, berating card-senders for the environmental impact can look weak if that's the only issue those people consider. Would all those lecturing about the trees also stop eating meat for Christmas, given that meat production is hugely inefficient in terms of crop usage, and forests are routinely cleared to turn over to farmland?

If you don't want to send cards then don't. That doesn't mean you're more charitable or environmentally conscious than those who do send them though.

FWIW, we buy charity cards direct from the charity to maximise funds raised for them- and I have to say that I've had my awareness of certain charities raised when I've received one of their Christmas cards. We also each choose a charity to donate to, as part of our family Christmas present fund . We give to charities via DD throughout the year, and contribute to food bank donations with our shop. But you can't respond to a post about charity instead of cards by saying you're doing both without looking like Smuggy McSmugface of FB (or MN )

Christmas cards are a total waste of time, money, effort and trees. I stopped sending them many years ago. They are clearly a dying tradition, as the number we receive is diminishing every year.

It’s so cringey when an OP humiliates themselves and then only replies to people who agree with them, with lots of trashy ‘lol’s and emojis to indicate the sheer banter.

I love sending and receiving Christmas cards. It seems to be the last effort people make to actually write something on paper and post it. It’s all bloody email and text. I still post thank you’s.
How lovely to get a hand written letter/card/note through the door

Giving to charity = good

Telling other people that you are giving to charity = showing off

linking it to Christmas cards, almost irrelevant, as it is the public display that is virtue signalling, rather than any particular occasion.

But I say 'almost' because I think some PPs are right. Why cards - which give joy to someone else, but are a chore to you? Why not curb a different part of conspicuous consumption, taking the pleasure hit yourself? So - no wrapping paper, no crackers, chicken not bronze turkey. Or perhaps no extra food shop at all, and donate the money you have saved to a food bank? Which I think would be an excellent idea, for all the same reasons as given for donating card and stamp money, but with the added bonus that it impacts only your own household and needs no public explanation.

I think people only feel the need to emphasise the fact that they're giving to charity to explain that they're not giving Christmas cards because they receive a lot of cards and feel that they're being rude to not send them. They feel that they have to justify it.

I think it's a dying tradition because of the cost of postage, and in the future there won't be this need to justify not sending Christmas cards.

But also, Christmas is the season of goodwill, so giving to charity does have a place.

They all end up in landfill anyway

We did it once. I had a newborn and a toddler. My friends son was very ill. I had more desire to help him than spend hours writing cards, so I donated the £40 I had allocated in my budget to a charity supporting his condition instead. What's the problem? You don't know what people do behind the scenes or what their motives are.

Would all those lecturing about the trees also stop eating meat for Christmas, given that meat production is hugely inefficient in terms of crop usage, and forests are routinely cleared to turn over to farmland?

I agree with you - as well as not sending christmas cards, I have been vegetarian for 30 years

Yes, you are being unreasonable. and selfish

More important you recieve a peice of cardboard that you will not recycle, than a charity get the cash

have a word

More important that you eat a turkey rather than lentils, when a charity could have the cash?

More important to literally chop down a tree which slowly dies in your front room , than give the cash to charity and save the environment?

More important to buy stuff for people who already have plenty, than give the cash to charity?

More important to order stuff off the internet which comes in a ton of packaging, than give the cash to charity and save the environment?

More important to have a family sized tub of Quality Street and some Twiglets than give the money to charity?

More important to spend money on an extra bottle of wine than to send a card to Great-Aunt Audrey, when it'll brighten her room in the care home and she'll show it to her care staff and friends ?

It's all about what people choose to prioritise. Very few people are in the position where their Christmas spending is so morally superior that they can reasonably judge others. To be brutally honest, most of of could sack off a lot of unnecessary spending in many areas of our lives, in order to give the extra to charity. But we all do what we're comfortable with.

Sorry you feel this way OP. I don't let others about giving to charity. I thought it might be helpful for you to know that some people do give and don't tell anyone. Not a bad thing to tell though - often people do it as a way to raise the profile of the charity they're giving to.

I'm troubled by you.There is a darkness about your posts. I hope you find your way to a better place. Genuinely.