Has the cost of Stamps killed off the Xmas Cards?

[girlfriend44]

I don't send cards anymore anyway, but wondered will they die out with the cost of stamps now?

You can't put an email or digital card on the mantlepiece though can you?

Love the lack of cards at Christmas myself
Less tat hanging around.

This!

I love writing and receiving cards, although don't receive as many as I used to. To me it's always been part of Christmas. I am from a large family so when we were growing up we used to receive loads from school friends and they would be hung on string in the lounge and dining room. I used to love going into Woolworths as they would have loads of boxes of cards to choose from.

I just think it's a real shame that it's dying out. Receiving a text just isn't the same.

When you think about it it's environmentally mad to chop down hundreds of trees to make cards that get thrown in the recycling or landfill!

Not an ancient tradition anyway, just a clever wheeze to make money in the 19th century.

No! Just the faff I guess.

Now we just need to do away with birthday cards and all other cards.

I do send birthday cards , but if you think about it too deeply , it's a silly tradition tbh.
(I have given up on the Christmas ones though )

I'm 37 and I don't generally send Christmas cards because my friends still move around a lot and half the time I don't know their most current address.

Not sure if it's a generational thing, or if I have particularly itinerant friends...

I grew up in a village. We used to write Christmas cards for our friends/neighbours and post them in their letterbox as we walked the dog in the evening. They were nice memories. We only posted a few to family and old friends so stamps rarely came into it. What's the verdict on this now? Is it weird to give Christmas cards to people you know if they live close by. I would love to honour this tradition with my DD but have no idea what the new normal is.

It’s not weird at all, it’s just not as expected anymore I think.

Not weird at alll imv.

True. But emails/ social media and computers is as bad, if not worse.

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-staggering-ecological-impacts-of-computation-and-the-cloud/

I’ve never used second class stamps before, but there’s no way I’m buying first class with the price hike coming.

Handful of cards to elderly relatives and that’s it this year.

Given the size of Singapore, I’m surprised that any stamp costs more than 50p.

Second class stamps remain at 85p so best to just use them and post early.

Nail in the coffin perhaps? I enjoy picking my cards and I enjoy writing them. Bit last year the cost nearly made me drop my cards when the cashier told me. I won’t be sending many this year. It’s too expensive.

I'd say social media has killed off Christmas cards. People just think it's easier to send a message online. Same with holiday postcards.

I noticed this about a decade ago, various people told me that they are no longer sending cards but giving £20 to charity instead. I haven’t sent a Christmas card in years, my daughter sent them to her classmates at primary school but my sons never bothered. I think there are lots of 20 somethings that never have or will send a card.

Holiday postcards I have stopped sending. They take months to arrive. But I still send friends Christmas cards, fewer and fewer to be truthful, but I now only send the cards to people who would want to know that I am still alive and kicking.

I have a handful of older relatives whom i think still regard cards almost as a sign of how many friends you've got and are gutted/feel lonely if they don't get many.

However as they are dying off, there are fewer and fewer of those i send each year now.

While i like the gesture of a card they are:

• expensive
• stamps are too expensive
• i am bothered about the utter waste/environmental impact

It tends (in international friendships which are most of my Xmas cards) to be reciprocated only when the second wife has met you in person. Men, in my experience, regard the Christmas Card round as women's work. So they lose touch with friends,

Think RM need to have a special stamp for just sending Christmas cards. I say if they are 50p each - they will get 3 times as many cards sent through the post now so get the same money.

Most of my family are now no longer with us and lived 80 plus miles away. Used to hand over my parents 5 or 6 cards to them when visited my late grandmother. She then past on the other cards to the other relatives or they picked it up when visiting her. So some cards were passed on three times.

At my work (leaving next week) most of us don’t bother giving cards to each other as in the locker room, there were piles of cards which colleagues didn’t bother going through them and collecting cards with their names on them.

I remember the days my parents and I had about 180 cards. School friends, Brownies, parents’ colleagues, friends, relatives. Now parents are retired, school friends don’t send cards or lost contact. Many family and family friends have passed on. Then many said that they are giving a modest amount to charity (£20 or so) instead

Yep. Last year I sent a fortune and wasn't even sending that many cards. I definitely won't be this year

But they don’t want the letters! That would be x3 the work! What they’re interested in is parcels

I/We have a family friend in NZ who was my uncle's girlfriend in the 1970s and became a treasured friend. Contact has been maintained by phone calls and cards for almost 50 years, plus a few visits back and forth. But she is still my fairy godmother, who would move heaven and earth to be part of the circle. She's now about 81, and I'm unlikely to see her again. But the fact that we live on the other sides of one planet doesn't mean we shan't talk again. We pick the time carefully.