No One Gives A Shit You Went To Bora Bora, Brittany

The cards are arriving en masse. Performative, or purposeful?

For the life of me, I cannot answer this question. I’ve been getting them close to 40 years at this point — my parents also used to get the “Christmas letter” — and it’s obviously been in hyper-drive since I was about 28 and my friends began having kids. I’m ashamed to admit that my fridge is normally about 92% lily-white during the holidays, which is a reflection on me more than anything else, probably. But still … I just don’t understand the point of them. A few reflections, if I may.

Are they sentimental?

The biggest defenders of the annual Christmas card refer to them as sentimental and personal, which is comical. It’s a photo, or a series of photos, with bullet point life accomplishments on the back (if you so choose), and you blast the same photo/layout to everyone. How’s that personal? How’s that sentimental? It’s basically the holiday equivalent of LinkedIn cold DMs, but you might vaguely know the person who you’re blasting the card to.

Don’t you already know stuff about the life of people, via the Internet?

A lot of the biggest devotees of the annual Christmas card are the same people who post about 1–2x/day on social media, meaning that a lot of the stuff in the card — “We bought a new house this year!” — you already knew, and quite possibly saw every brick laid on that house in IG Stories or somewhere. So if the updates exist day-to-day, and you know what the kids generally look like, why does the card need to be sent? I guess the easiest answer here is “It’s a thing that people did in previous generations, and new generations carry it, and the tradition feels nice, even if the communicative points are obsolete given the modern environment we live in.”

The guy thing

If you are a guy, around November 24th of a given year, you will begin receiving texts from other men saying “Address?” What is happening here is that their wives are preparing the Christmas card, and they want addresses, and the husband/partner is chasing those down. Sometimes, if you look right above the “Address?” text, you will see that the most recent time that guy texted you was 11–12 months ago, also asking “Address?” This is the true glory of male adult relationships. As a dude, I’d much rather that instead of “Address?”, some guy texted me about the NFL playoff picture, or his generalized goals for 2022. But … I also realize a lot of guys are utterly beholden to their wives, so there’s that as well.

The case against holiday cards

Good Housekeeping does a good job on all that here.

My general rule, I think, would be that if your youngest kid is 6+, probably stop sending ’em. They work for newborns/toddlers, even if you see those newborns and toddlers online all week as is. They work as a beautiful reflection of the elegance that is your familia in those years, but beyond that it feels pretty virtue-signal-y, to be honest.

Your take?