***Let me just say right up front that I realize how incredibly fortunate I am that all I have to do is fret over THIS kind of thing. ***
While I didn’t actually set up the Christmas tree or do any shopping (FAIL) this weekend, I DID order our holiday cards.
This was an activity fraught with indecision and nail biting.
Let’s back up a bit.
When my husband and I were in IKEA a few months ago, I stumbled on some beautiful holiday cards.
They were ten bucks a box, twelve cards in each box. But they were lovely! And I hadn’t seen them for the past eight years in a row, which is more than I can say for the holiday card offerings at Borders and Target. But my husband put his foot down. Ten bucks for twelve cards is too steep.
But the thing is… He doesn’t GET the holiday card thing at all. He thinks of it as a needless, time-consuming, expensive activity. I think of it as a great way to stay in touch with friends, family, and that extended network of people in whose orbit you want to remain for purely selfish reasons.
Turns out, he has some very specific thoughts about holiday cards, including:
- Holiday cards are stupid.
- Photo holiday cards are even MORE stupid.
- If you’re sending out more than 24 cards, you are stupid.
Okay, so maybe he didn’t say any of those things in those exact words. But I got his point, loud and clear.
But I looooooove holiday cards! Every December when I was growing up, my mom would tape the brightly colored greetings we got from friends and family and random organizations they donate to all along the mantel. It was so fun to read the holiday letters from people I knew… and people I didn’t. I loved the family photos of distant relatives and politicians seeking donations. I loved the uber-religious cards and the ones with semi-inappropriate cartoons.
Now that I’m a grown up, I love receiving holiday cards! Opening a red envelope and finding a little holiday message from a friend or family member makes me smile every time.
So why wouldn’t I want to spread a little holiday cheer amongst all my loved ones?
I’ve been thinking about holiday cards for months now. But the ones that were on sale were inevitably at Borders or Target… And inevitably either ugly or cards we’d already purchased and sent out several years ago.
Then I heard from another blogger about how CostCo had really inexpensive cards. I believe she said they were 27 cents apiece, which was AWESOME and that they were cheaper than Shutterfly or Snapfish or whatever. SOLD. I headed over to CostCo and immediately got sucked in by the pretty! photo! cards! And they were all on sale!
(And significantly NOT 27 cents apiece.)
Anyway, I got our cards via CostCo’s website. This required much fussing and anxiety because:
a) I couldn’t decide which photo to use.
b) While I have no qualms about buying a few boxes of 12 cards at a time, here and there, it seemed like this was a LOT of money to spend on cards all at once.
c) I have no prior experience with CostCo’s photo cards, so am not sure if they will turn out great or blurry and/or crooked.
My husband and I have been sending out holiday cards for years – before we were even married, in fact! (And by “we” I mean pretty much “me” because of his aforementioned distaste for holiday cards.)
But we have NEVER sent out a photo card. However, I LOVE receiving photo cards. Even if I don’t recognize a single person in the photos. And! I had the perfect photo of my husband and me taken on the Blue Ridge Parkway overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains.
(Note: I would show it to you, but then I’d have to kill you. Sorry.)
(Additional Note: I wouldn’t REALLY kill you. I’m not in the habit of killing people.)
(Additional Additional Note: Perhaps I should abort all attempts at murder humor.)
But then I started to worry that maybe it wasn’t an appropriate photo for a holiday card. Because it was taken in the fall, not the winter.
Two things changed my mind, Internet:
- My parents unanimously agreed that the Blue Ridge Parkway photo was far better than the Alternate Photo I’d sent them of my husband and me in our ski garb on a ski slope last winter.
- I re-read Swistle’s Christmas Card Scoring system. She clearly states that you get 5 bonus points if your card ” includes photo or is photo card” and an extra bonus point if “photo is non-Christmassy so will look good on fridge all year.”
So I chose the Blue Ridge Parkway photo and created a card and ordered a batch.. Of course, not until I’d re-examined the pros and cons of choosing a non-holiday-themey photo and questioned for the umpteenth time whether we should send a photo card at all and my husband had rolled his eyes so hard with frustration over my indecision that they are probably lodged somewhere in his brain matter.
* * *
By the way, I made a big long list of People Who Will Receive Holiday Cards and there are 87 people on the list. EIGHTY SEVEN. Is that normal?
I basically took our wedding invitation list and trimmed it a little to People We Still Keep in Touch with Since the Wedding and added New People We’ve Met Since Residency and voila! Eighty-frickin-seven people.
If you send out holiday cards, how many do you send out? And do you have specific criteria you use to decide who gets a card and who doesn’t?
It turns out that the CostCo cards cost exactly the same as those IKEA cards would have. However, I was able to convince my husband that they were Worth It in three ways:
- I somehow stymied him with math so that he thinks the IKEA cards cost something like $2 a piece. (He’s a busy guy – no time for MATHS.)
- I reminded him that our time has value, and with these photo cards we won’t have to do anything but address and stamp the envelopes. (Paying something like $26 extra to have CostCo address the envelopes for us was Not Worth It.) He is nothing if not logical, and agreed that this was true.
- I wore him down with plain old hemming and hawing and fretting to the point that he would have paid $5,000 a card just to get me to shut up.
World class negotiator, that’s me.
* * *
Here’s a question for you…
Do you associate certain colors with one holiday vs. another?
Here’s what I mean…
See, at least half of our holiday card recipients are Jewish. So we make sure to buy religion-and-holiday-neutral cards. (This is also because my husband and I aren’t particularly religious, but that’s a topic for another time.)
I found a pretty card background on CostCo’s website, but my husband dismissed it as “too Christmassy” simply because it was red and white.
And I guess, yes, Hannukah stuff is usually blue and white while Christmas stuff is usually red and green… But if the card itself says something like “Happy Holidays!” or “May You Have Great Joy This Holiday Season!” or something likewise holiday-unspecific or non-religious… does it matter what color it is?
I mean, obviously my husband thinks that color matters… And his opinion COUNTS, clearly (and we did not go with that card background) (although the background we DID choose has red writing… so… hmmmm…). But I am interested to know whether YOU think color matters. And if you are Christian, would you be offended to receive a card that is blue and white? Or if you are Jewish, would you be offended to receive a card that is red and green? And if you don’t celebrate a holiday in December, do you get offended by holiday cards in general? Or, if not OFFENDED, per se, by these situations, then at least MIFFED?
I am curious to know because it makes no difference to me. But I suppose that may be a side effect of not subscribing to a specific religion.
Well, it seems as though I’ve exhausted the topic of holiday cards. Although, if I haven’t, please let me know in the comments which critical issues I haven’t covered.
When the cards come, I will let you know if they are worth eleventy billion dollars. Let us hope so, because otherwise my husband will have won, and we will likely never send out holiday cards again.
I don’t know what to say about the holiday color issue but… I LOVE Christmas cards!!
In our family we have people who are both Christian and Jewish, so we celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas. Among our friends we have those who celebrate both or just one or the other.
We work pretty hard to avoid the red/green stuff for Hanukkah and stick with blue/white. On Christmas we lean towards the red/green/white, but may also use a variety of other colors, including blue.
I think we are more concerned with “offending” by using Christmas colors for Hanukkah than vice versa because, in our area, there are very few Jewish people and Hanukkah tends to come across as an also ran holiday and we want to avoid being perceived as thinking that.
Great minds think alike! I just picked my cards up from Sam’s the other day (same thing as CostCo if you haven’t heard of it) and actually they turned out beautiful. So, don’t fret – I’m sure they will be awesome.
And for the past three years since we’ve been married, I’ve used the same method as you for deciding to whom we send Christmas cards…though it does seem that each year we hack off a few more people we lose touch with, which, WHEW because our list was 100+ at first. I think we’re now somewhere in the 80’s or 90’s like you. (But I did have to order 100 cards just in case…sometimes people that I didn’t initially remember seem to pop up.)
I’m pretty much obsessed with sending and receiving Christmas cards, and part of me thinks that I send SO MANY in hopes of receiving JUST AS MANY in return. 🙂
How cool would that be, to receive 100 Christmas cards?! I bet my mom gets close to that amount. At this point, my husband and I get maybe 10 cards a year. Sad clown.
I love anything/everything holidays, so Christmas cards are a given excitement.
In regards to the colors – I have several friends who are Jewish, and although I haven’t really sent out “official” Holiday Cards, I have in the past sent cards out to close family/friends. If I was getting a bulk pack I tried to stay away with anything being strictly green/red. I looked for Silvers/Golds and Red/Whites (I thought this was more of a neutral color scheme) and maybe picked a few different ones that were red/green for my family and blue/white for my friends.
It’s all a matter of opinion and how you want to do your cards. I think as long as your happy with them people aren’t going to think your insulting them. I think it’s more of a conscious thing with me being paranoid about it – must be the International Studies degree 😉
I don’t think 87 is too unusual- we send out about $100. Actually what really gets me is the postage cost- ouch! But I figure it’s actually pretty inexpensive for basically sending little holiday greetings to so many people- and like you said, it’s so fun to receive them! I love getting holiday cards, especially ones with photos!
I think our card this year is blue and says “Happy Holidays”. I try not to get cards that are holiday specific- just because I have a lot of friends that don’t celebrate Christmas.
Sorry, I meant 100 cards, not $100. 🙂
Oh, I am right there with you. Except I haven’t yet made up our cards because I am hemming and hawing over them. This task STRESSES ME OUT. That, and we STILL don’t have a good pic of the kids together.
We send out about 75 cards, usually photo cards. It costs around $50-$60 for the cards, plus another $30 or so for postage. Its an expensive tradition.
We also send to alot of non-Christians, so while I don’t care what the colors are, I usually pick a “happy holidays” or “seasons greetings” card over a merry xmas card.
It IS an expensive tradition. Worth it, I think… But expensive.
We’re sending out holiday cards this year for the first time – if I ever get around to addressing, stamping and mailing them.
I went back and forth about sending a photo card because to me it seemed strange/vain to send a picture of us because we don’t have a cute kid/dog/cat/other to include in the picture. But I finally decided that I love receiving photo cards so why not send one?
The next dilemma was the same as yours – which picture to use? Basically the only picture of the two of us I liked this year was taken on a beach – so I went with it! We live in Florida and I found a nice palm tree holiday card so I figured it would work (I hope).
We’re not particularly religious and we also have Jewish friends so I also chose a non-religious card. It’s blue and says Season’s Greetings. I hope that its lack of holiday specificity/religious overtones won’t offend anyone but if it does, well…tough cookies. I’m not religious and neither is my card. I personally would not be offended to receive most any kind of card – Hannukah, Christmas or otherwise. I think it’s nice to be thought of at the holidays.
I’m sure everyone will love your card!
1. YES, I too was worried it would be strange/vain to send out a photo card with just us. But I went with it anyway for exactly the reason you did: I love getting photo cards, so I figure others must enjoy it too.
2. Agreed. I would not be offended at all, no matter what holiday was on the card. I just like getting the card! (I even like getting a holiday card from our insurance agent.) But I fear that you and I may be in the minority that way?
Fun! I’m not sure about the colors thing. I’ve never ordered custom cards, so I usually buy a variety and send the least Christmasey ones to the Jews on our list. But there aren’t too many of them and I’m pretty sure that all of them celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah anyway. My plan is to start doing the cards with photos when I’m either pregnant or we have a baby (depending on the timing). I really do enjoy writing out Christmas cards though, and it’s so fun and festive to receive them!
I love holiday cards — both sending and recieving them. I didn’t do them last year because I was just carded-out after wedding invitations and thank you notes but I plan to resume them this year. I probably have about 40 people on our list, but I don’t think 87 is too many. I don’t send them to work people, so 40 is just our friends and family.
Now, photo cards. I’ve done them twice. Once it was a photo similar to the one you’re describing (mountains, hiking) and the other time it was a picture of Max the cat (RIP) in a Santa suit. Obviously, I am not opposed to photo cards as a rule, but you have to be a little careful with them. They can turn from adorable into smarmy and barftastic pretty quickly. But this is really only a problem with people who tend towards the smarmy and barftastic to begin with, so you’re exempt. Photo cards APPROVED.
I would not be offended by any color scheme. I’m non-religious also, but I love cards with big fat menorahs on them just as much as I love cards with pictures of baby Jesus or nondenominational snowflakes. If someone took the time to send me a card, I’m delighted!
1. I think we skipped holiday cards the year we got married, too. I figured a) they’d gotten two pieces of mail from us that year already and b) the wedding was in early December, so they were probably sick of our faces anyway.
2. I am SO GLAD I am exempt from smarmy and barftastic. (And just to reassure you that you exempted us with merit, I will say that we are seated on a fence with the Blue Ridge Mountains spread out behind us. There is no kissing or awkward posing or other weirdness.)
1. 87 cards is way more than I would want to send out. We send out 60, and about 40 of those are to family. But if you want to send out 87 cards, more power to you.
2. I don’t care what color cards are. Ours this year are blue. If someone is offended by the color of the card, I don’t think you should be friends with that person! I always send out cards with “Happy holidays” or “Seasons greetings” kind of messages, but I’m not offended to receive religious ones.
3. I think it sounds like you chose a good photo!
I love your no-nonsense policy about people who are offended.
This year I’m cutting way back. I made my cards at a stamping, card-making party. I only made 25. The only people who ‘get’ cards have contacted me or my husband during this deployment. That made quick work of the list cutting down task. Am I going to hurt feelings this year? Yup, probably. But then they’ll know what it’s like.
I listened to an interview on the radio of Nora Ephron recently and she had a quote about how she has strong opinions about things that are unimportant and I am totally like that. One of the things I am super opinionated on is holiday cards.
1) I hate photo cards. I like photos tucked inside the cards. But I like personal notes that come with actual paper cards. I disklike the impersonalness (ha! made up word!) of photo cards.
2) We send about 80 cards every year. My husband does come from a huge family, though, so a lot of them are family.
3) I buy multiple types of cards for multiple types of families. Some families aren’t religious – they get “happy holiday” cards with some winter symbol on it. If they are religious, they get something tailored toward that. If I don’t know, I probably shouldn’t be sending them a card.
I could go on all day. Overall, though, I love getting cards. I love that someone took the time to think about us and sent something our way.
Yes, I totally agree that photo cards are less personal. And I fully plan on NOT writing little notes on all of the cards. (Although I have every year in the past.) It’s just the balance of me wanting to do it against me not wanting it to take over my life, you know? Writing 87 little notes, even if they are similar or even identical, is time that I just don’t have.
Again, I just asked myself what I’d prefer: No card, or a card with no personal note and a photo. Definitely I’d prefer the card.
I love that you have strong opinions on this topic! I would love to hear more of them. 🙂
OH MY GOD, I am in total agreement with you, NGS!!! I have incredibly strong feelings about Christmas cards, which I will outline below.
Oh so much to comment on here!
1. I almost fell out of my chair when you said Costco cost less than Shutterfly because naturally I forgot to look there (card carrying member of the club, holla!) and already bought my cards from Shutterfly. My palms were practically sweating as I just perused the Costco website and didn’t find any cards cheaper than the ridiculous deal I got at Shutterfly (You prob still got a better deal than me, but at least Costco.com wasn’t all YOU ARE A HUGE SUCKER!!! to me), thus ruining the previous euphoria I felt over my Shutterfly deal (not the blogger one).
2. You are A-OK on using a fall-ish photo. The only photos I don’t like are beach ones. I just think they are a bit out-of-place next to snowflakes and holiday wishes. Or perhaps it’s just jealousy.
3. I have finally convinced my husband 95% that Christmas cards are worth the expense. The logic that worked best is along the lines of the sad story of how, for high school graduation, my husband collected thousands of dollars in checks from his parents’ distant friends and relatives, and I collected…$200. Do not pass go. Do not collect more than $200. The reason? My mom stopped holding up her end of the social bargain. She didn’t send graduation checks to her friends, she didn’t send Christmas cards, she slowly removed herself from her friends’ list of friends. By this logic, it is important that we keep in touch with people we otherwise have little contact with so, if the need should arise, we could say “Oh, my dad mentioned you know the hiring partner at X & Y firm,” etc.
4. Strangely enough, my husband thinks if you’re going to do a Christmas card, you have to include a letter. So I wrote a letter!
5. I experienced untold stress because we had not taken a single photo together since New Year’s (largely because after my husband’s health issues began, we stopped going out and/or taking photos). We went to the state capitol two weeks ago to get a picture, but the sun was in our eyes, and my husband looked like he was going to the bathroom. NO THANKS. So then I wracked my brain for a DIY photo we could take a home. Newlyweds usually pose with their dog in front of their fireplace, their tall Christmas tree, or the front door of the house they just bought, and we don’t have any of those things! So I put our little 3 foot tree next to our armoir where our stockings hang, wrote “happy” and “holidays” on two pieces of paper, and sat in front of the stockings with the self-timer on. And it actually turned out pretty darn cute in a silly sort of way.
6. I was able to convince my husband that non-photo cards were a waste of money because everyone likes photo cards better and is more likely to keep them after Dec. 25th.
7. Unfortunately, I do agree with your husband on the colors for the most part. Our list is likewise half Jewish, and so I tend to avoid things that look TOO Christmas, even if the message is non-Christmas specific. Our card does lean more Christmas than Hannakuh, but in the end it’s not obviously Christmas. I think snowflakes, stars, scrolls, and metallics tend to do best for going both ways.
8. Well, 87 is a lot compared to our list. Our list is hovering around 50 (mostly because that was the most cards we wanted to pay for). If money were no object, we’d probably have 65 cards to include the B-listers, but you have to keep in mind that we had 60 guests at our wedding. I think wedding size is a good indicator of how many Christmas cards you will send.
9. Loved the post. CLEARLY.
1. Oh dear! I feel that I may have passed on some bad information! I read on another blog that the cards were cheaper on CostCo… But I didn’t actually CHECK to see if they were! And I also think maybe the blogger was talking about regular cards that don’t involve photos? I DON’T KNOW! So I am SURE you got a fabulous deal.
3. Yes – it is critical to uphold the social contract!
4. I LOVE receiving Christmas letters! Should we write a letter? What would it say? “Dr. D is making his way through residency and applying to fellowship. Mrs. D is a freelancer. They spend about 5 hours a week together. The end.” Seems like not enough?
5. This is always our problem. I made a concerted effort this year to force my husband to take photos of the two of us everywhere we went. It worked! We have a bunch of fairly cute photos of the two of us.
I often think about the holiday letter. I like getting letters from people, but have never tried to write a letter/ note myself. I feel like it would be 3 sentences, just like yours. And I also feel like the letter describing my life is kind of self-centered (maybe because my family ALWAYS receives a letter from this one specific family about how AMAZING and GREAT and FANTASTIC and ACCOMPLISHED their kids are). I don’t want to be that person. GAH! Too many options.
Re: #3, it sounds like your husband comes from a very generous family/circle of friends! While I think sending Christmas cards is important, I’m not sure it will guarantee that your kiddos get nice presents. I don’t know anyone who collected thousands from high school graduation!
Ok, for real, I know I say this every time but I totally love you and I totally GET you. I spent 1.5 HOURS the other day trying to figure out what pictures I wanted to use, if I should do one picture (normal) or three (is that self-centered? BUT I do have kids, so there was one picture of each kid and then a family one), should it be Christmasey (we celebrate Christmas but obviously not everyone does) or Holiday-ey (safe for everyone) AND should we use our fall pictures that we had taken professionally (I wasn’t sure if this was appropriate either, but decided to go with it, because YOU try to get a three year old and a 7-month old to pose nicely with Santa hats under a tree) and O.M.G.
But here’s a tip!! There are vendors on Etsy who sell card templates (for everything, baby showers, holidays, birthdays, everything!) and for TWELVE TO FIFTEEN DOLLARS you e-mail them the pictures you want to use, what it should say, and they e-mail it back to you in a format you can then print at Walgreens! Or Walmart! Or Target! And you can usually print stuff at Walgreens! Or Walmart! Or Target! for like $.19 a piece—so that equals SUPER CHEAP. Whew. I’m exhausted. And I still have to pick out my card.
P.S. If it wouldn’t be totally creepified, I would ask for your address and send you a Christmas card.
I usually just by cards with snowmen, snow flakes etc on them to avoid the whole religious bit.
We send out a little letter with things we’ve done this past year. How our jobs are going and school. Any vacations etc.
And we usually include a photo with the card.
Those cards are for family and close friends.
Everyone else just gets a signed card.
OH, I do love this topic. One of my favorites.
I think fall photos are perfect for holiday cards: winter photos usually require people to be so bundled up you can’t even see them, and summer photos seem weird in December, but fall is the season that makes sense to take photos in, if you use a recent one for cards, because it just WAS fall.
The expense thing is why January is one of my favorite times of years: I go on the annual Clearance Christmas Card Hunt. I like the Anna Griffin cards at Target, and those are the $12/10 kind I don’t like to pay for, but if I get them at 75% off or 90% off? LOVELY. I pay 12-30 cents per card. This does require a certain mindset about whether or not everyone should get the same card, since sometimes I can’t find enough boxes of a card to give to everyone on my list—but often I can find SIMILAR cards, or else I can use single boxes as fill-ins for years I don’t have quite enough cards, or for teachers or whatever.
Our list is around 60, I think, but some of those are “optionals”: people who don’t send us cards, or people I sometimes send to or sometimes don’t (like, depending on whether I’m thinking it’s dumb or fun to keep sending cards to people who don’t send them to us), or, like, the pediatrician’s office, where I doubt they would notice if we skipped them. I think our core list (the ones I would send to even at $1.20 a card, except then I’d buy cheaper ones) is around 40. And then there are 20 ABOVE the 60, for years when I feel like sending even more cards.
I SORT OF associate the colors, but not MUCH. One year I sent blue-and-white cards (snowflake theme) and didn’t think of them as either Hanukkahy OR non-Christmassy. But I’m aligned with the main winter holiday, myself, and with the non-religious version at that, so I probably wouldn’t be as attuned to it as someone who celebrated one of the less-main ones and/or a religious one and was always feeling conscious of that fact. I don’t even get offended if someone sends me a nativity with a King James Version verse on it—though I deduct points for too much of that stuff in the part the person added to the card herself.
I seem to have veered off. SUCH a favorite topic.
I never even thought to buy Target cards on clearance after the holidays! I guess I sort of write them off because, in my experience, Target cards can often be cute but the quality is not always super – however, I can only say that in regards to the uber-cheap cards, and lower quality makes a certain amount of sense there. But if I could find the high-quality Target cards on sale… Well, that’s genius!
After Christmas a couple years ago, I bought a billion boxes of the on sale cards that you stick a picture into. When those are used up, I am going to get the printed kind instead because those are even easier.
We send thirty cards. Because that is how many addresses fit on one page of address labels. (And when you move as often as we do, the lower tier of friends doesn’t stick around.) I haven’t checked this year though, I may not be able to strike off enough names from last year to add the new ones. I may have to go to a second page of labels. That will not please me.
I am never insulted by receiving a different faith card. I always assume that people will send me a card representing THEIR celebration, not mine.
As I mentioned above, I have very strong feelings about Christmas/holiday cards. I shall outline these feelings thusly:
1. I send them every year. My entire extended family is in Ireland and for those cousins who aren’t on Facebook and for those I only see when I visit every two years, the Christmas card is among the only ways I really communicate with them. Same goes for the husband’s extended fam in India.
2. I write personal notes. Yes, my hand cramps. Yes, it takes forever. Yes, the postage is insane (it’s 98 cents for international stamps).
3. I like receiving photo cards and seeing my friends’ babies or checking out cool vacation photos, etc. BUT.
4. I am effing tired of receiving printed photo cards stuffed into envelopes with printed return address stickers and printed address stickers. That took, what? Two seconds of effort? Congratulations on having a nice photo to stick in an envelope. Seriously.
4. At least write the damn address by hand.
5. I buy Unicef or Amnesty International cards or cards that have proceeds that go to an organization I care about. The assorted card collections from these organizations have specific Christmas messages but a lot of them are messages for peace on earth, let’s all hold hands, joy to the multicultural world, etc. I LOVE the dove as a holiday symbol. Those cards get sent to our non-Christian pals and to the Indian relatives. No one gets offended. Or at least no one says anything to my face about it.
6. When I have kids, I’ll probably succumb to the holiday photo card route but I’ll probably send a photo inside a card or something like that.
7. Handwriting 4EVA!
Yay for strong feelings!
I am very glad that I BARELY avoid your holiday card wrath with your concession in #4b. 🙂
Am curious – how many cards do you send out?
Ha, I guess I had some pent-up angst over a card I got last night from people I haven’t heard from in forever. Their kid is super cute, though. So I DO like getting photo cards (because who doesn’t like photos?) but I think the process of just printing out a bunch of mailing labels and then slapping them on an envelope is so impersonal.
I send about 45-50? So not as many as you are planning to send. I go with immediate family first, then cousins, etc. then close friends, then I have a bunch on hand for sending to peeps who send cards to me.
I think if anyone has a problem with the color of cards or even what a card says (Happy Holidays v. Merry Christmas) then they need to get a life. Seriously, the world is way too concerned about being PC and I’m sick of it. I say send the cards you want to send in the colors you like the best and call it a day! If anyone gets offended, that’s some shit THEY need to work through.
(Who’s jaded? Not me!)
Anyway, that being said, I love Christmas/Holiday/Hanukkah cards of any shape, size, or color and ESPECIALLY the ones with pictures!
I have a lot of Jewish friends who receive our christmas cards, that blatantly say “Merry Christmas,” but I always write Happy Hanukkah on theirs … I don’t think I would associate colors with a religion these days with all of the creative holiday card colors (pink, green, red, blue, purple) – you name it, it’s a holiday card color 🙂
you know, i send christmas cards to everyone regardless of their religious. not even “holiday” cards. straight up christmas. this is the way i look at it: 1) i would never be offended if a jewish person sent me a Hanuka card – i’d be happy they thought enough of me to share their joy. 2) my friends/family aren’t really the types to get offended over something like that. and really, 3) if they’re getting offended by me sharing a christmas card w/ them, maybe it’s not going to work out between us… maybe that’s just me though.
guh.. typos everywhere.
I USED to send cards out for every holiday – Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter – and I LOVED doing it! I stopped around the time ALL OF MY FRIENDS got married and started having kids around the same time. I was VERY single, and felt that I couldn’t compete with the holiday card that featured the glowing couple in their wedding attire – or the cards that featured little baby Johnny in the tub. I felt I couldn’t send a card with a picture of myself because that would be lame – and I couldn’t send a card with a picture of my cats because that would begin the conversation that started with “so sad, sending pictures with the cat….it must be so hard to be single.”
Instead of sending the cards, I saved the money on postage and card buying and would buy stuff for myself 🙂 Now, even though I’m not single anymore I still don’t send them. I end up throwing all of the cards I receive in the recycling bin the day after Christmas – and I figured people would do the same with mine.
Sooo…..I guess I’m with your husband…..I think sending the cards are kind of ….stupid…..WAIT DON’T SHOOT!!!!!! 🙂
We usually send out 125/130 cards. I need to trim my list for next year though. This year, I picked a light blue and white card with little reindeer and snowflakes.
LOL. Your husband really hates Christmas cards? That’s kind of a bummer.. I always love getting a couple cards now, and I loved reading and seeing all the pictures when my family got them as a child.
“I loved the uber-religious cards and the ones with semi-inappropriate cartoons.”
Hahaha I feel the same way. Christmas is a time to remember the true meaning, and make dirty jokes about reindeer and Santa too right?
As for the whole buying cheap cards in bulk, I wish I could help but I’m only sending out a few this year to my good friends over the country so I wouldn’t know where to go/look.
Happy Christmas Carding!