Facebook and Twitter Killed Christmas (Cards)

Over the past few weeks, I have come to a conclusion.  As much as I enjoy Facebook and, more recently, Twitter, they have perhaps begun to bring on the death of one of my annual favorites.  Christmas cards.


I love Christmas cards.  I like sending them, I like reading them, heck, my parents even keep the ones they get in a basket so when I come over I can sort through them and read theirs.  I even get a kick out of reading the letters from their college friends (who I have never met) and feel like, through that, I have watched their kids grow up.


But that is all changing.  It would be rare now to get a Christmas card and, looking at the photo, think, "Wow, look at how big the kids have gotten!"  I probably saw them on Facebook last week.


No need to tell anyone anymore how your kids did at State tennis or football or swimming, you probably Facebook-ed, tweeted or blogged about it along the way.

Have an important request or cause?  Yup, you probably told us about that already.  I know I did.


A long letter?  I have to admit, I am a letter person.  In the past, I have enjoyed finding a creative (or so was the goal) way of talking about the past year.  Bear in mind, by goal was threefold:


1. Share a bit about our lives in case we hadn't talked recently
2. Not to make it on to your list of "worst Christmas letters" because it was too depressing or made any of us out to be too proud of ourselves or our kids
3. Not to tell you a bunch of stuff you didn't care about or didn't want to know


But all that has changed.  I would say that, between the two of us, we are now friends with at least 95% of our Christmas list on Facebook and then some.  I was certainly not sending Christmas cards to all my ex-boyfriends.  But, if those people are so inclined (including the exes), they hear from us daily.  And if they don't...if, perhaps they friended us (or vice versa) and then wondered, "Why in the world did I reconnect with them??!!" we all know they can easily hide or even block our trivial updates.


Usually by this date we have a pile of 50-60 Christmas cards on the counter.  As of today, we have 2.  And no, I am not taking it personally.  I don't think that suddenly 58 of our friends don't care anymore.


And I love them, and for all of you motivated and organized enough to keep them coming, please do.  But upon seeing the cards, Brian asked if we should get going on ours.


And I thought for a second and then said, no, I think we are going to skip them this year.  After all, when you are constantly sharing your thoughts and images, what more is there to say?


So Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and all of those other sentiments that we truly mean, but that I won't be getting in the mail to you this year.


And keep those photos, updates and news coming.