Do you still send Christmas cards?  I do and I don’t.  As in, I’m not one of those dogged holdouts still sending paper cards instead of one of the countless digital options we have today such as a text or an email or a Facebook post or one of those twinkly musical e-cards.  

So, I do send actual Christmas cards, but only to those folks who’ve sent me one.  And may I make a plea to all such folks that you at least send them early so that the recipient (that’s me) has time to race out and buy cards and stamps to return them in time for Christmas.  

My Christmas card list has dwindled over the years.  Remember when card day was a thing?  When I was a kid it was an essential Christmastime activity.  The dining-room table would be cleared and my parents – the job usually falling to Mum – would get out the list and spend the whole afternoon writing cards and addressing and stamping the envelopes.  ‘To Ronnie and Trevor, love from Pat and Frank and the kids.’   That’s all you had to say because Hallmark had done the job of composing the actual greetings for you.

I was helping my mother with this very job when the news came over the radio that Harold Holt (the then Prime Minister, for the benefit of younger readers) had disappeared in the surf at Portsea.  It was December 17, 1967.  A bit late to be getting the cards out, you might think, but the postal service was faster and more reliable in those days.

In those days the traditional Hallmark greeting card, with tinsel and Santa and reindeers and snowy northern landscapes, reigned supreme.  As the years passed charities hit upon the idea of using Christmas cards to raise funds.  For a number of years I took annual delivery of a box of cards with designs by foot and mouth artists.  They were cheaper than the Hallmark variety and supported a Good Cause.  I dutifully sent them off to older family members until it got to the point where there weren’t many such folks still around and I was left with a surplus every year.  Came the day when, wracked with guilt, I cancelled my order.   I eased my conscience by telling myself there couldn’t be that many people with that level of disability, who were also artists, who still needed my support.  

Then environmental awareness came to the fore and if I needed to return cards to stubborn card-senders, both they and their envelopes would be made of recycled paper.  Because, you know, cards and envelopes come from dead trees.  Stamps too, but that couldn’t be helped.  

You’d think with the advent of email and digital text and social media that Christmas cards would be a thing of the past, but a casual tour of newsagents in my neck of the woods shows that the traditional Christmas card is a thriving phenomenon.   And I don’t mean ‘traditional’ in the Hallmark northern-hemisphere sense.  Santa has survived numerous attempts to cancel him, and he’s often depicted doing the Aussie summer thing of lazing on the beach, minus his thick winter gear but still wearing his white-trimmed red cap.  There are lot more funny cards, and, alas, cards that don’t even mention Christmas but wish you Happy Holidays.   You’ll never get one of those from me! 

Strange that those musical e-cards haven’t caught on to the trend of going local.  They are still as tinselly and twinkly as the Hallmark card at its kitschiest peak.  I’ll say one thing for them though – you can return them instantly with a click or two on your computer keyboard.  No having to bother thinking up something to say or finding a stamp.  

I confess to doing that, and to sending individual texts and emails.  I haven’t ever done that thing of sending a mass season’s greetings mailout.  Remember when you used to get the annual family report on paper?  Usually prefaced with an explainer about how things have been so-o-o busy for the family this year…..
You could tell they felt guilty because there would often be a handwritten personal note at the bottom.  So they had to think of something to say after all.  Might as well have put it on a card!

I’ll finish by wishing you all Merry Xmas and Happy New Year.  I would have sent a card but you know, things have been so busy this year…..