Do you still send cards at Christmas?

I have just arrived back indoors having been out to post a couple of Christmas cards into neighbours' houses. It took me less than 5 minutes. This year, I only had to deliver two and, I know they will be reciprocated. Last year, I delivered four. Previous years, it was in double figures. So, what's changed?

People have changed. And so has the economy. Cards - and especially postage - are no longer the inexpensive option they once were. Neighbours move away and others pass away. That's called 'life', paradoxically. And, of course, we now have smartphones and other gadgets to contact each other by. Every second of every hour of every day of every week of the year. Sending Christmas cards is a dying pastime. Even our posted Christmas cards have dwindled over the years. Six out this year and six in. Only a couple of years ago it was double that.

One of our neighbours decided that they are no longer going to send Christmas cards to anybody; at least they made their intentions clear by stating the fact in the last card we received from them. Instead, they now donate the equivalent sum spent on cards to their chosen charity. That, on the face of it, is a good idea from the writing out of them standpoint. No more writer's cramp. No more wondering where they put their address book. No more wondering who to cross off their card list for the following year when they don't receive one from someone they were expecting one from. And so on.

Then there's the uncertainty that Christmas cards will or won't get delivered in time. Royal Mail are always complaining that their posties are snowed under all year round and not just at Christmas time. I can remember back in the 1960s (and maybe the early part of the 1970s) when students were drafted in to help with the delivery of post leading up to 25 December. Starting in the first week of December every year, we would receive several deliveries a day through our letterbox at home. My mum would only just finish arranging the two or three dozen cards we received first thing in the morning (and I mean before sparrow fart) before another load crashed onto the front door mat. Four or five deliveries a day (sometimes more) were commonplace and not unheard of. 

There would be pantechnicon lorries parked up our road, absolutely full to bursting with sacks of mail that the students were going back for to deliver, leading up to Christmas. And, the students would not knock off for the day until the contents of all those sacks had been delivered, even if it took them until ten o'clock at night. Now, it's only the bills and junk mail that ever seem to get delivered on time.

Slowly, but surely, all that postal activity from the sixties has died off. Fewer and fewer people are sending cards, a token of festive cheer and greeting, nowadays. Who is to blame? What is to blame? Is anything to blame, except 'changing times' and 'shifting landscapes'?

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Feliz Navidad, Joyeux Noel, Nollaig Shona, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera to you all!

Trevor Mulligan