I love the excitement of finding something in the our mailbox, other than flyers and promo cards. I love seeing who the envelope is from and then opening the envelope.
I am then usually disappointed to find a mostly blank card with just the printed felicitations and then a signature or two.
Meh. That seems like a lot of effort and money to just send a generic greeting and a signature. Yes, we can put the card up on our card holder and revel in the feeling that people still care about us and love us. But then what?
Recycling Christmas Cards
At the end of the season we don't keep the cards. We toss them in recycling except... we then need to spend some time deciding if the card is recyclable.
If it has any of the following, it is NOT recyclable...
- glitter - sooooo bad for the environment
- sparkles - same thing
- singing/talking battery-powered - battery and plastic housing not recyclable
- shiny foil bits - like the lettering
- ribbons - gotta rip those off and toss them
- jewels and other doodads - rip those off too
- plastic coating - just wrong
- photographic cards - ooohhh... of the family sending the card... those need to be kept!
- self-stick address labels
- festive stickers (I'm guilty of this... I LOVE plastering stickers all over the envelope)
- plain old tape - because sometimes the envelope flap glue is not great...
So I sit there every year and assess each Christmas card and their envelopes. I find that, by far, the vast majority are not recyclable. At least not the front cover of the card. I will often tear of the back part and recycle that and then toss the front part in the trash. My rule of thumb for deciding if something is plastic-y is... can I tear the card easily? If not, then it has some plastic baked into it. Paper-anything should tear easily.
But tossing the front of the card just seems... wrong. Such a waste. All the energy that went into making and transporting and buying and sending that card and then... it is used once and just... thrown out?
Reusing Christmas Cards
Would it be horribly horrid if we reused Christmas Cards? If we just cut off the back part and then wrote a new felicitation on the inner side of the front cover? So a Christmas post card? Or is that chintzy and cheap? Or thrifty and eco-friendly? Of course, if people wrote longer greetings on the inside cover... that would preclude this idea!
There was a day when I had grand schemes to reuse Christmas cards (the front cover) in new and creative ways. Like...
- Cut them into a circle and use them as a mason jar topper if we gift garden preserves
- Glue the front of an old card to a piece of folded card stock to make a new card
- Write a recipe on the reverse and include when you send packages, parcels or gifts
- Cut them into gift tags (that way you don't have to buy gift tags)
But those dreams of being a creative wizard, worthy of Pinterest fame have evaporated in the reality of life. Time to let those dreams of future me go! Although... some of those ideas seem really easy... like the jar toppers...
But maybe physical Christmas Cards are going the way of the dinosaur? Maybe it's more 123GreetingCards.com? Digital Christmas Cards? Although I really don't like those either. First, they usually end up in my spam folder and I'm never quite sure if they are legit... so I might err on the side of caution and just delete them, sight unseen.
So fear not... physical Christmas cards are still a "thing"... you just have to walk into any store to see boxes and boxes of fresh, crisp, shiny, glitzy Christmas cards.
During Covid, Christmas card sending went up over 144%! That's a LOT of Christmas cards! I can't say we were part of that. We kind of gave up on writing Christmas cards a few years back. It just seemed soooo... pointless and capitalist...
Capitalist Cards
Go out and buy a new box of cards? Nope. We gave up on that years ago. When we do send cards, we go to the thrift store and grab whatever we can find there. Are they stylish? Probably not. But they are cheap. They are second-hand. And they are mostly simple cards made of paper. (Pssst... we do the same for birthday cards... no way are we paying $7 for a new card!)
Then we have to figure out who we are sending the cards to and decide which type of card to send to each person. Some folks really appreciate the religious cards (Hi, Mom!) and some don't appreciate a hint of religiosity in their mailbox.
Then we get to write their addresses on the envelope, which causes us to wonder... have they moved this past year? Is this even the right address? Heck... do we even have a physical mailing address for them? We just have a street address but no postal code so need to spend time on Canada Post figuring that out.
Then it's off to the post office to buy stamps and mail the cards. Have you seen the cost of postage??? And the line-ups at the post office? Ugh! (I sound a bit Grinchy right now... don't I?)
We'd go to all the effort and send out 40 cards, and would receive less than half of that in return. Sometimes only 10. Meh... thinking of the money (purchase price, stamps) and the environmental impact (unrecyclable cards) and the time (writing the cards and then deciding if they are recyclable)... it just seems a bit pointless. An empty gesture signifying what... cultural norms? The "done" thing? But whyyyyy????
Family Newsletters
On the other hand... some cards include a family news sheet of the past year. We LOVE reading those!! That brings smiles and joy and laughter and connection.
We generally send ours via email though. Guess we are cheap. We don't want to print 40 of those on the colour printer (or at Staples) and have to do the whole Christmas card thing...
Those family newsletters are also much harder to let go!
We've fallen off the Christmas newsletter bandwagon the last few years. Will this be the year that we get back on it? Time will tell... But look for it in your email Inbox in early December... maybe mid-December... Maybe this blog will jump-start our newsletter writing.
I do have to say... I still tend to send physical Christmas cards to our elderly relatives, the ones who don't have ready access to email. I'll write some news inside the cards as well... none of this "Christmas card with just a signature"... I really don't see the point of those... But maybe that's just me???
An Alternative
Maybe we could try this instead... Think of the elderly, the single, the grieving in your network. Maybe it's that old lady in the little house down the street. The one that you see toddling along on her daily walk to the corner store. What if you figured out her postal address and sent her a card... with a personal greeting.
Maybe it's the single person up the block who keeps their yard so neat and tidy and has done a tonne of improvements over the last year. Send a card thanking them for all that they have done to beautify the neighbourhood.
For years, I drove by a house on the way to my local Starbucks. I always thought it was a very well-maintained house. Such a neat garden and well-maintained. I never saw anyone there, just the one car in the carport. I thought about writing an anonymous post card just thanking them for their presence. And then I saw the occasional second car in the driveway and I thought... "they are getting home support" I should really write that card." I never did.
 |
| Too late to send that card... |
And then this past year, there was a For-Sale sign on the property. Now it's sold and... did the people move into a care home? Did they die? I don't know. But I never sent that card and that sits with me.
So... this year... we'll be trading writing "signature cards" for sending cards to... other folks. Call it Random Acts of Christmas Card Kindness...
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