Christmas cards out of fashion I wonder !

Thank you Linda I too send about 40 and get the same back and like you I do birthday cards too and each year choose a different theme, and again like you I m behind but will get going soon
I find it fun to do and makes me think of the person while I m making it some of my friends have told me that they keep mine every year and that’s lovely
The price of postage is high but at least we get deliveries I sent my granddaughter in NZ a birthday package and card airmail a month ago and she’s still not received it they only get about two deliveries a week and they are just outside a big city
I hand deliver about half my Christmas cards and send the rest second class but then I rarely have a glass of wine or buy expensive clothes bags or shoes so it’s all relative

I too hate e-cards happy they are so impersonal and you can’t hang the up ?

I like sending cards to family & some friends who I want to just say hi to.
Admittedly, they are not religious & always for a charity (RNLI, self interest as I live by the sea)
I am quite relieved not to get many back as I dislike having to pin them up on strings.

It's not the cost of cards as you can shop around. I think it's the cost of postage that's caused people to stop sending cards. And of course you can send cards by email nowadays.

I make my own cards too, printing them from my paintings and then hand finishing them. I have always loved giving and receiving cards and keeping special ones. I do hate e cards - can't see any point in them.

Yes definitely get less, but still send a few but the cost of postage can also be a factor, I missed our local Scout post last year as they were not doing because of covid. I did deliver to most those by doing a run in the car.

Love yours Bluebell. DH makes ours (pro artist) for close friends and family. Quite often irreverent, so have to be careful who gets one, send a few charity cards to the religious types who are either old physically or special. We've definitely cut down on numbers we send and equally receive; agree younger people just don't do it for whatever reasons.

I am afraid I am a real “bah humbug” when it comes to xmas. Loathe the way the shops are already full of xmas stuff. However I still put up a xmas tree and send out cards - and keep saying “next year I won’t bother”

Whoever invented the word 'fashion' should be shot!
Why should anyone dictate whether we send cards.
Or tell us how to dress, what colour to wear, how to style our hair etc etc It only makes money for those producing 'stuff'.

I like sending and receiving cards at Christmas but only send to close friends and family and always buy charity cards. I love seeing my christmas cards displayed on my large livingroom windowsill. Like many here have said, fewer are sent and received each year tho I do keep and re-display cards the children and grandchildren made, and also crafty cards from talented friends . I too am not a fan of e cards, too impersonal. For the same reason I dislike Moonpig and DH is a fan of theirs. I am tactfully quiet when his appears tho. But I just feel that he couldn't be bothered walking to our local lovely independent card shop and choosing one of hers.

Sorry, had to have the 'Fashion' rant.

Still send on behalf of my husband and myself, usually on December 1st. One year I returned as I received and was caught out. Thought I would not get so many but did --- all at the last minute when last posting date for 2nd class had gone by !!!!
Wonder if anyone feels the same way as I do though about this - any cards that comes from my husband's relatives have his name first and yet it is me who does all the hard work every year !!!
Petty, I know.
BUT his sister and I have been sisters in law for 43 years, you would think that I might rate first just for once !

No, I don't think so. I love to get them, and send them. Rather disappointingly people now give them to me rather than use the post. The Christmas Post used to be a big deal in our house; my student brother and sister were Posties at that time of year. Apart from what's on the front (used to be Jacks on birthday/Christmas cards when my dog was alive, now it's Hares for their mysticism) I try to buy from a charity that means something to me, or friends. This year it's MS for me - everyone I love is well at the moment, thank Goodness.

Definitely dying out I have cut down from 150 to around 30 and that is just to immediate family and neighbours who still send to me. It is far too costly these days. Sign up to Jacqui Lawson cards or similar and you can send them all for the registration fee, I send cards almost daily now. Lovely.

Goodness I hope not! I make cards using bits cut from last years and all gift cards the same..a nice retirement winters job.. plus I still have many years supplies of reduced cards bought when no time to make to work my way through!
Besides I love a Christmas card not an emoji /meme via FB etc

I love the sound of hand painted cards☺️ I always have and always will send Christmas cards, even when people tell me they are not sending them this year but donating to charity. I tell them I do both. I think during the pandemic and lockdowns -folk needed to know that others were thinking of them by receiving a card with kind words and greetings inside. I have cut down the number of cards I post& try and hand deliver if I can due to the high postage charge. I noticed my display was not as plentiful last year though as it has been for the last 37 years.

I buy cards from a Charity but send less these days as most go with a hand written letter,also have started sending quite a few on line cards (Free) Stamps are so expensive and I send a lot abroad.A friend said to me years ago if you can’t visualize some ones face don’t send them a card.But I do send cards to people who don’t have much family.

I’ve always bought Christmas cards, and will carry on, I must admit I don’t receive as many as used to, I think I’m down to around a dozen now not including family

BlueBelle

This was last years one, simple but everyone seemed to like it

That is a nice piece of artwork.

I like Christmas cards that do not have any wording on the front. I frame them using frames from Tesco that I get delivered with the grocery.

Some readers might like to know that one can send a greetings card, which could be a Christmas card, indirectly for a modest fee by ordering one online. Not an e-card, a nicely printed one on thick card.

www.papier.com/

Each one is printed specially and is customised using a web-based facility.

There are various possibilities.

For each possibility one can customise the design by adding a message inside, or set it blank if you want to get the card yourself and add a greeting manually.

The possibilities are as follows.

1. Use a preset design and just customise the greeting inside.

2. Add a photo or photos to a preset design and customise the greeting inside.

3. Add a photo without using any of the artwork of one of their templates.

4. 2 and 3 above are marketed as 'photo cards' but in fact use a jpg file, so one can use a jpg file of artwork that one has generated on a computer.

So the picture that BlueBelle has posted could be used, though best using the original artwork as a landscape format card,

The cards are 7" by 5" so it is best if the artwork is made 7" by 5" with an extra 3 millimetres on each edge as bleed areas and at 300 dots per inch jpg file. The cards are straight edged. However, they are printed and then trimmed so one can get really nice results where the picture goes right to the edge, like in a quality card that one might get from a museum or an art gallery or a visitor centre somewhere.

However the web system is tolerant and will scale and will crop either horizontally or vertically so that even basically 'rough' input, photo or artwork, (ie it is just what you have and you would like a hardcopy print even if the print is a bit lumpy because that is better than not having any print at all) will usually get a result of some sort.

Also the print process itself needs CMYK artwork. However, I sent one in with RGB artwork and the colours came out much brighter than if I had made a CMYK version of the artwork myself.

I guess that for a consumer product such as this the system needs to be able to detect an RGB format file and convert it to what it needs as many photo files will be RGB colour format. I suspect that the print process is some form of advanced system with more than four ink colour spray channels or whatever is the correct term, as the results that I have got have got colours more intense than I could get on a home printer.

There are other businesses that do similar things, but I have only used this one, mainly because this one produces cards with a matt finish and some others do glossy, and because some (maybe all for legal reasons?) put their imprint on the back and this one has a name that I do not mind being printed on the card.

(This is just comment. I have no connection with the business other than as a paying customer. This is not advertising by an influencer.)

Last year I sent all my overseas cards via TouchNote with a personal photo on as I did not want to queue at the Post Office. However my card to my brother in Canada arrived at his house in March via India and I wonder what happened to the others.
I agree cards are out of fashion with younger people. But I think they send them to “old folk” because they know we like them. ?

Yes, definitely they are out of fashion. Cards have become far too expensive and the postage is horrendous, so I either write a letter or send an e-mail to anyone who I won't be seeing at Christmas and want to wish Happy Christmas.

Admittedly, I never saw the point of just writing "best wishes for Christmas and the New Year" or the like, and writnig dozens of letters to people who never reply and probably don't really want to know what we have done since last year seems equally pointless to me.

Love sending and receiving Christmas cards and think Christmas is a wonderful season apart from all the hype months before.

Last few years we've had quite a few e-cards but much prefer the paper version with a few words of news especially from friends abroad and those we only see infrequently. They look so festive too btu are costly once the postage is taken into account. Have recently stopped sending cards and gifts to nieces and nephews who we never hear from and who never even let us know a gift has been recv'd.

It’s estimated that we in the UK sent a billion Christmas cards in 2020, more per head than any other nation. So no, they’re not “out of fashion”, thank goodness.

I buy mine directly from favourite charities, love to receive them from family and friends and see them as an essential part of our Christmas decorations.

As for e-cards, whatever the occasion, I give them as much thought and effort as the sender has put into sending them out. One click and they’re deleted.

For the last 20 or so years of her life my mother-in-law couldn't manage the task of writing Christmas cards (about 100 cards to friends & family of all ages and all over the world). She got her three sons & DILs to take over the job for her as she worried that if her friends didn't receive a card they would assume she was dead. MIL died at the age of 102 by which time a good number of those on her Christmas card list had pre-deceased her.
DH and I still send Christmas cards but not to people we see on a day-to-day basis and never with a round robin letter. I buy my cards in January when all my local charity shops have them in the sale.

I still like sending and receiving them - they form part of our decorations, blu-tacked to various painted surfaces. I only ever send charity cards.
We do receive fewer now - I dare say the cost of postage must be a factor with some people, but two couples I know who stopped sending some years ago are certainly extremely comfortably off - I suspect that they just find it too much of a chore to write them.
I know it’s like getting blood out of a stone to get my dh to write the very few he has to do, and he can’t be the only one.