to think you can send Christmas cards and give to charity?

[MargoLovebutter]

I don't know why this fucks me off so much, but I've just received my second email of the season telling me that a friend won't be sending me a Christmas card because they are giving to charity this year.

WTAF have the two got to do with each other & why do I need to get a boasty email telling me of their charitable giving?

I'm sure I must be missing something other than the fact I think they can't be arsed to send cards. Enlighten me please.

Why should anyone feel pressured to explain their choice? Is card sending a law now ( well done marketing pressure)

Why should anyone feel pressured to explain their choice? Is card sending a law now

I like them so much I wish it was....

....LIGHTHEARTED

Giving to a charity has nothing in common with this and as I only send about 20 cards the sum raised for charity would be pathetic.

I've just got back from the shops with my ~20 Christmas cards. They cost just over £35.

I have to post quite a few of these which is another £10+.

£45 to charity is not a pathetic amount surely and not everyone can afford to spend £45 on cards, then give another £45 to charity in the run up to Christmas.

All these recipients will look briefly at the card, maybe stick it on the mantelpiece for a bit, then throw it away. It seems such a waste.

The initial premise of the OP is wrong, because if someone is spending the money they would've spent on cards and stamps on a charity donation instead, then of course the two things have something to do with each other. One thing is happening because of the other.

Now if you just think people should keep quiet about doing it, that's a reasonable perspective, a matter of opinion. Provided of course you're not one of those people who thinks a person you send a card to is doing something wrong by not reciprocating.

£35 for 20 Christmas cards? Really? Where did you buy them from?

That does seem very expensive. Most cards are much cheaper.

But it's true that despite all the people saying they do both so there's no connection, lots of people can't afford to and in some cases it is either/or. There was a poster on one of the other threads who's on benefits who gives the money she used to spend on cards and stamps to Refuge instead. Those of us who do have the money to do both need to be careful we aren't afflicted by an attack of the Marie Antoinettes.

And even if the average spend is perhaps a tenner, I've never yet worked for any charity (and I've worked for more charities than most) that wouldn't have been grateful for it.

I sincerely hope that, by the time my young kids are adults, Christmas cards have died a death. In fact any greetings cards please. Wasteful tat when we live in a planet that needs an astronomical reduction in single use items (I don't care if they're recyclable cards, we don't need them). Send an email or text, it's the sentiment that matters. And it needs to start by people throwing etiquette out the window and not giving a stuff if they don't get a card from the person they are constantly anyway

i bought my cards this year in the sales in January. Got 3 packs of really beautiful unusual ones for the princely sum of £4.50.

Hate getting them and hate sending them- all seems a bit pointless to be honest.

They clutter up all the surfaces and one gust of wind and the whole lot fall over and need putting back up!

We started doing a donation to a charity at work a few years back. Prior to that 50 people used to give 50 cards to people they saw every day.
Totally pointless.

Oh and I love Christmas

Just not Christmas cards...

@Brigitsbigknickers I couldn’t agree more!!🙌

@dementedma
Erm card factory!
How is just over £1.50 a card expensive?

I see the confusion lol! These are not just your multipack ones. I have to buy those in addition for Sandra at work and Jim next door etc (and like you say are about 10 for £1.50 - though I had plenty left of these from last year so they weren't included in my £35 spend today). The more expensive ones are specific family ones where I can't send a generic multipack one and even with a very small family the costs of these add up

In what way is that confusing?

Just because it's not what you do, doesn't make it hard to understand.

YANBU
Just bloody laziness.

How do you have 20 family members that for some reason need a specific card?
Because my brother won't know I'm sending him sibling Christmas wishes unless he gets a card saying brother on it.
As for DH, if I dont get a suitably romantic one about him being the star at the top of my Christmas tree he might forget we are even married.
Naturally this principle applies to everyone I know.
(Joking)

Yeah, it's just laziness. They give a tenner to charity and then eff off to the shops in their huge cars to buy a load of plastic tat.

Costs me a lot to send cards, but receiving them in the post is one of my favourite things about the season. This generation is pissing away a lovely tradition (while at the same time wrecking the environment with their endless enormous advent calendars etc.)

It makes me REALLY cross. So thanks for starting the thread @MargoLovebutter

How do you have 20 family members that for some reason need a specific card?

It's not hard with 5 aunts, then 4 nieces/nephews, 2 siblings and 2 sets of parents and grandparents. Do people really give their siblings or parents a 15p card from a multipack?! My family members would genuinely be disappointed if I did this. Whereas some of my family donate to charity instead of sending cards and this is seen as acceptable.

I really don't think that's what most people mean when they talk about buying Christmas cards.

Why not? It's exactly why all my friends/family mean when they talk about giving to charity instead of buying Christmas cards

You can't be serious?!

You're amazed people send Christmas cards to their parents? 

I have bought these cards for people for the last 30+ years so they were definitely not invented in the last 10 years