Merry Christmas Card

Sending a Merry Christmas Card to the important people in your life is a holiday tradition that goes back quite a long time, and it is a wonderful tradition to keep alive going forward. However, it seems that in recent years the traditional, personal and thoughtful gesture of reaching out to your loved ones, friends and family has become more of a robotic, mechanical process then a truly thoughtful one. Many people today simply buy a stack of cards, merge addresses onto the envelopes and send them off. This reminds me of elementary school Valentine’s Day cards in reverse… it seems that if you can claim you sent out X number of Christmas cards (and that number is a large one), the more “Christmas-y” and loving you are as a person. Personally, I simply don’t buy it. And here’s why.

It seems to me that if you want to wish someone a Merry Christmas or happy holidays and let them know that you in your family are doing well, sitting down and actually writing out some sort of message would be part and parcel of doing this. Granted, writing the same thing over and over and over again could become quite tedious. This is why I am not completely opposed to a kind of summary form letter that is sent to everybody updating what has been going on in your and your family’s life for the past year. However, it should be clearly noted in such a ‘letter’ or ‘note’ that you are keeping things as efficient as possible by giving a summary to everyone, and not trying to pass off your letter as a unique holiday communication to any one particular recipient on your list.

Still, attached with that mass communication, adding a little personal note to the particular person or family you are sending it to seems like the minimal personal gesture that could be mustered during these loving, sharing holiday seasons.  After all, general greeting cards, or even personalized Christmas cards with family photos, should say and share something personal from you to them. Otherwise, it seems like you’re simply saying, “Hey, look at me and my family. Don’t we look good? And aren’t we a wonderful family for remembering you this Christmas season.” When in effect All you have done is loaded their address into an automated system, spent a buck or two on a card, envelope and stamp, and fired a kind of buck-shot scatter Christmas card mailing in every possible direction. Again, it just doesn’t seem to convey the personal attention, love and caring that is supposed to be inherent in the season.

So, now that that personal pet peeve/rant is out of the way, let’s talk about some of the wonderful options you have available to you today when it comes to sending out holiday greetings and Christmas wishes. There has never been such a wide array of communication options available to you as there is today. Taking a few moments to personalize whichever method you choose to use can make all the difference in the world to the people who are receiving them.

Certainly having the personalized photo Christmas cards is nothing new. What is new is the fact that the price point keeps getting lower and the customization available to you keeps getting better. Whether you go to a physical greeting card store such as Hallmark or visit a quick print pharmacy such as you might find at Target or Walgreens pharmacies, you will quickly and easily be able to customize your Xmas cards with a whole variety of your own personal images. Many times you can even do some minor photo editing such that you can morph a person’s face into that of Santa Claus or one of his reindeer or elves. You can really have a lot of fun with this!

Of course you will have options beyond just the brick-and-mortar type of card shop. Online Christmas cards are a huge industry and can make your holiday card shopping process much less hectic while probably saving you a good amount of money at the same time. Many of the online card vendors have excellent tutorials to walk you through the process of uploading your images and selecting and arranging them. From there, it is simply a matter of registering, making payment, and ordering your cards. Many times you can even have the card shop ship your cards directly from the site, meaning you won’t have to do all the addressing and stamping of your holiday cards.

All of these methods allow you to do anything from the generic “Happy Holidays!” message (by now, you know my feelings on such a message…), or you can take the time to write your own personal message to be included with each and every card. The flexibility, creativity, and cost-effectiveness of these online Merry Christmas cards truly makes reaching out to those you love a simpler, quicker, and less expensive endeavor than it ever has been in the past.

Of course the choice is yours, but we truly hope the efficiencies afforded to you by modern technology when it comes to holiday greeting cards will cause you to reinvest that time into making your holiday messages just a little bit more personal. Trust us, the people you’re sending them to will be very pleasantly surprised to get a personal note from you and will love to know what’s on your mind in what has been going on in your life. Spending this little bit of extra time and effort will truly make your cards the epitome of a personal Merry Christmas card.