The 'I hate Christmas cards but love Christmas' support thread now open

[NorksAreMessy]

have sent no cards for more than 5 years.
My life is not worse.
In fact it is quite a bit better

And don't start me on round robins.....

Can i join the collective? I have not sent a Christmas card since I left school, which was oh about 10 20 years ago. I must confess that I have bought them since, with the intention of sending them, but they are so bloody pointless that I never bother. Why bother sending a card to someone who sits opposite you at work, who you talk to every day for 8 hours a day pretty much constantly through the whole year.

I haven't displayed cards for years either, though DD is now in yr1 at school and I suspect she will get a glut of the pointless things this year. I will put a string up in her bedroom and she can have them in there.

And don't start me on the shit birthday cards you get in December - mine is on the 21st - and then there's the fact that the majority of birthday presents I get, from birth have been wrapped in Christmas paper (and I bloody love Christmas as well)

:)

Yay! Have never sent them, never will! It's now at the stage where we only get sent 2, one from my stepmum dad, and one from an aunt I haven't seen for a decade whose grasp on reality isn't that strong, and wouldn't notice whether I returned one or not. Everyone else has either taken the hint or taken offence. Freedom!

Was it something I said?

Hello poohba perhaps everyone has taken our aversion to stupid Christmas cards to include and encompass and encircle an aversion to MN posts as well :(

It upsets me that schools, green thinking ones even, perpetuate this stupid Christmas card bollox, and the DCs are all forced by school public opinion to produce a card for each per on in the class.

Except, that is, if you are Norks' DC, who took in Christmas biscuits instead.

No cards, no cards no cards

Ds has started nursery this year, does this mean I have to get involved in card related nonsense? I reckon that it can wait until he is old enough to write his own, should he want to. Or will that make him horribly unpopular?

I have to say, I'm pretty crap about cards in general. the DC get Birthday cards, everyone else gets a phone call. I don't do mother's day, or father's day. I say thankyou, don't send a card. Sod it. Men don't bother with all this nonsense, do they, somehow it's become a female responsibility.

We can't move for Christmas cards around here by the end of December. Add up the cards my 2 DDs get from their friends and the 50 odd I get from the kids at school, that's plenty. Never mind the many I then get from the family I see on Christmas day. THose cards hardly ever get put up as by then Christmas is pretty much done.

I don't mind cards from people you wouldn't otherwise see, or from people who only send a card.

What I don't get is cards from people who are giving you a gift. I know you've thought about me as you've given me a gift. I don't need a card too!
(This theory extends to birthday cards too IMO)

The clutter is another big part of the collective's aims....they lie about all over the place and fall off things, and look messsy.

Any we a given (except the one from my Mum, who always makes them) get displayed in the recycling

Really? There are others who don't send cards!

I never understood receiving a card from people I see and chat to nearly every day. Why why why? It just seems so lame to write a card, put it in an envelope, write someone's name on and then hand it to them at work/school etc. And then see them every day after the card exchange up to and including Christmas itself.

And I am dreading the children's demands to send cards to their friends. I have 3 dc in school that would be many tortuous hours writing the bloody things

The only good point I can think of is when I hang a few ribbons between the sidelights in the front room and use people's kindly but annoyingly sent cards instead of decorations. Of course, as someone mentioned, the cards from the bloody MP with their family on go straight to the recycling. I can't decorate my house with that shit.

The only card I will send this year will be to my granny who is 87 and lives quite a way from us. Although I am not sure she would notice if we didn't - she is convinced I have two birthdays every year as I receive two cards a month apart.

Perhaps the collective should start a 'no Christmas cards in schools or offices' campaign.
I really don't want a card from our accountant(see her every week), the paper boy (I will still give him a tip anyway), ANY commercial organization (a card will NOT make me buy another car, take out a loan, vote for you), my next door neighbor who gives me one BY HAND...nonsense!

Cards to grannies are completely exempt from my ire.
They come under the heading of 'doing a kind thing'

Not just me then! I hate writing them, i hate posting them, i hate receiving them, i hate dusting round them, i hate that they fall off the shelves anytime anyone opens the door, i hate the ones that open horizontally that just slip down and dont stand up properly, i hate the ones you get from steve and barbara... Who?, i hate the fact my recycling bin is full 16 times just with the little cardy fuckers..... Wow, that was good!

DH complained when i said we werent sending any a couple of years ago, so i said, well you write them then, he whinged the whole way through the tedious writing experience, then made me bloody well post the fucking things!

I AM NOT DOING IT THIS YEAR, END OF STORY, MN TOLD ME NOT TO!

And.... While we are at it, bit out of season, but what the fuck are easter cards all about?!

Welcome to the collective byeck.
you have taken the first step to becoming a no-card-carrying member of the no-Christmas-card-collective.

Easter cards are pointless. Ditto new year cards, 'save the day' cards, oooh, in fact only a very very very very very small number of occasions actually NEED a card at all.

Oh, and I am a bit surprised at your DH.
I have assumed that it is women who are keeping this tradition alive, and that is why we women of the NCCC (no Christmas cards collective) can DESTROY IT

Mwahahahahahahah

Aaaaaawwww I get a Christmas Card from QVC (yes I know they don't all personally sign it) and it includes a 3 -Easy Pay code for a shopping order, because I'm such a fabulous. special customer.

LOTF that is nearly as good as the one from DFS

I really dislike the whole Christmas card thing and I've been scaling it down for ages. This year I'm only going to send to family. I feel
liberated!

Flossie your family love you. Unless they are ancient great aunts, they will understand when you say card (£1) + stamp (42p) + time = nonsense!

Cards were sort of invented because the penny post was invented. Not because they were actually needed.

Join the NCCC and free yourself from the tyranny of this outdated, expensive, time consuming,unlovely tradition.

PLUS all the cards are HORRID.

If people were sending me pine cones or Gisela Graham ornaments, or even bits of ribbon to adorn my house, I would be genuinely happy. But a bit of 260gsm card with a picture of a robin, or a nativity, or a snowman weeing is not something I would chose to display

I will send one to my Nan, that's it. I loathe writing cards each year, so happy I'm not going to be frantically writing them on the 20th any more!

flossie well done!

in just one thread, you have reduced from 'family' to 'just my nan' (and as we know, old ladies are excluded from general NCCC on the grounds of 'doing a kind thing')

now what lovely thing are you going to do with all the time and money you have just saved?

this thread is hilarious.

i threatened to not send any last year but guilt got the better of me and i started frantically writing them mid December.
i dont want to write them this year either but i get worried about what other people will think! like im either ignorant or selfish or rude etc. especially all my neighbours. im not friends with them but we all say hello in the summer and all send a present when a babys born and we all send christmas cards but im really thinkin i wont this year cause were all getting less and less friendly and i dont really like them anyway and i dont think they like me much either so whats the point in us all being fake?
the other thing is i want to write a few cards to some friends and family but not others i dont genuinely get on with. its the same idea as the neighbour thing. i just want to stop the fakeness basically.

hmmm.

mrsm123 you can do it, break free of the guilt.

You have not stabbed anybody, or spat in their soup, or turned their loo roll round so it faces the other way, or stolen their DC's name for your own.

You just haven't sent them a card. If they like you, they won't care. If they don't like you, you shouldn't care.

Join the NCCC, and free yourself from guilt.
As a collective we have power to end this nonsensical tyranny :)

thank goodness im not the only lazy sensible person when it comes to christmas cards! I never sent them when i was single, and since getting married, only give them to immediate family and very close friends. I never spend the money on postage, because they usually double up as gift tags and get stuck onto christmas presents! that way im off the hook with christmas cards (dh family very traditional in that regard) and my gift tags look uber generous too
I have been known to make these few cards by hand (i dont make making an effort for family and friends) but these days a quick stop at oxfam and its taken care of.

welcome to the collective curlimum.

Making cards counts as ART and therefore is excluded - but only if you are making one sigle gorgeous thing - otherwise it is mass-produced extra work and the OPPOSITE of the aims of the collective :)

God I hate fecking Christmas cards soooooooooo much. Stupid pointless things. Of course MIL would disown us if we didn't send to her and every member of her enormous family.