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.

My mum is the type to buy specific cards that say Aunty/son in law/god daughter and I think she thinks she'll burn if she gets regular ones form a multi-pack. She'll visit 50 shops if she has to to get them and stresses out when I suspect that people really don't care (I don't)

I know I'll probably get burned at the stake for this but I don't buy cards or donate to charity with the money 😱 I do make phone calls on Christmas Day though. I think that says a lot more than a piece of cardboard

Costs me a lot to send cards, but receiving them in the post is one of my favourite things about the season

You enjoy getting them, great! You keep doing what you do, and send them to other people that feel the same way!

Why should your desire to receive cards (with the need for money and time to be spent on them) trump other people's desires not to send and receive them?

I can't be bothered with cards. Lazy? Well, I run two businesses, I'm the treasurer of a charity and I'm a single parent. If prioritising my time elsewhere makes me lazy, so be it.

The tradition is less than 200 years old. It's a blink in time, and only really affects Christian countries. I can't get too worked up about the prospect of Hall mark's profits going down.

updown the personalised card thing is adding a whole new dimension to the card debate .
I send personalised ones to mum/Grandma and dad/Grandad but everyone else gets a generic one.

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.)

Pissing away a lovely tradition?! Give over. It's people using an increasingly outdated, expensive and inconvenient way of sending greetings to each other because they like it, not some essential part of our cultural heritage. If you like them, go for it, but don't see your arse because other people like more efficient and yes, like it or not greener forms of communication. What next, a wail about the waning popularity of the carrier pigeon?

I don’t get the argument that people say it is expensive yet you only have to look on the ‘how much do you spend on your children’s Christmas presents’ threads (or even worse ‘Is this enough presents for my child’) to see that people seem happy to spend hundreds if not thousands on actual presents. In comparison the money spent on cards is probably a lot less. And yes, of course it’s possible to send cards AND give to charity without ‘boasting’ about it.

There are people who do this who don't have a lot to spend on presents though. It is possible to be in a situation where it's either/or. And really, assuming the present spend threads are representative is like assuming the holiday or salary ones are. And you wouldn't do that, would you?

Honestly, it doesn't bother me one way or the other. Send cards if you want, don't if you don't.

I do send cards, because I like to. It's part of my Christmas tradition to sit down and write them. I also try and include some memory we've shared that year, or make a point to mention something important that I know has happened to them this year, eg a wedding/baby/relative passing.
That being said, my list gets pruned regularly. If I realise I'm always the first to initiate a card, the next year I wait and see if they do it first... If they don't. Unless they're immediate family, they're off the list!
This year, for the first time in a while, I've got new people on the list, having made contact with extended family I didn't previously know!

Honestly, it doesn't bother me one way or the other. Send cards if you want, don't if you don't

^
This! This to me is a normal response to card giving. None of this branding people as selfish or lazy because they don't do things the way you do.

(when in reality, surely expecting other people to send you stuff just because you like it is fairly selfish)

I send cards because I know how it feels to receive cards when feeling lonely and low. It was really lovely to have something nice, a nice message from a friend or family member. When friends and family live far and wide we do not know who might be feeling like that and for what reason so I prefer to send in the hope that they brighten someone's day.

If I chose not to send cards I wouldn't announce I was giving to charity instead, I don't see the point.

Grab in my personal experience it’s always the more well off people who like to ‘virtue signal’ that they are not sending cards but giving to charity instead. I volunteer with vulnerable people on very limited incomes and many of them take a lot of pleasure in giving cards and small gifts at Christmas. Of course I understand that everyone’s experience is different.

Indeed it is, you're right to acknowledge that. There've been a couple of posts in the last few days from people on low income who've done it. I'd link for you but on phone.

Grab in my personal experience it’s always the more well off people who like to ‘virtue signal’ that they are not sending cards but giving to charity instead

Probably because people that don't have a lot of spare cash that don't want to do cards are just going to not send cards, and can't justify giving money to charity instead.