Reposting (with moderator suggestions incorporated): Did everyone stop sending Christmas cards? Or is it just not to my wife and me? Is it our era, our generation, or just this isn't done anymore?
Hello, good people of Reddit. I have rewritten this post. I hope it passes muster (that is sincere, not snarky; as an aside, I want to do a different post about whether our generation is responsibility for nothing being sincere and everything being ironic or sarcastic; that is for another thread though). The moderators said — and I agree it is only right — this be clearly related to the theme of the subreddit. See the last paragraph, which is explicit.
Now that it is the new year, my wife and I were chatting about the holidays as people put out their Christmas trees for the garbage service to pick up, take down lights, and so on. My wife remarked on how few Christmas cards we received. I believe when we were married (1998), we would get maybe 100 or so in a year, at least. This year, it was maybe 25 or so. It is noticeable. She says maybe it's as people become empty nesters and they have no kids, meaning less news. Also, we get a good number of emails with attachments, in lieu of cards. But even adding those in, it's not the same volume as in the past.
We have our own answer to the question in some sense. My wife and I didn't send out our own card either. Given the practice, like most social interactions, is in general reciprocal, one could point out that if we expect cards, we need to be sending them too. That makes me curious about the rest of you, and if it is generational (maybe it is change over time, not specific to us, but all people in this era). Anyone else notice the decrease in Christmas cards?
New paragraph. So with lots of changes, not just this, I wonder which it is. (A) I am wrong about the premise (people still send Christmas cards, just not to my wife and me); (B) this is a generational change, meaning young people don’t do it, and since young people outnumber old people, the culture has changed; (C) this is the era, not the generation, which are easy to confuse, but I mean nobody, young or old or whoever, engages in the practice, maybe due to the internet and social media; or (D) it is in fact a change within our generation, what my wife speculates, that it has to do with kids being gone, there being less to report. I am pretty sure there is a change over time, from, say 2000 to 2025 — I am trying to figure out why that is. But feel free to say you’re all writing one another hardcopy Christmas cards like before, just not to us.