Christmas card traditions seem to vary enormously. In England as a child I dutifully gave a Christmas card to every child in my class. Not receiving a card in return was the sign of total social disaster. Someone would have to really hate you not to give the obligatory card. You could also judge your place in the pecking order by how nice the picture on the card was. We all seemed to buy big boxes of mixed cards in those days and some of them were always truly ghastly. If you got one of those then it was a s clear as clear that you weren’t flavour of the month with the sender. I haven’t lived in England for a very long time, but I assume that the tradition still goes on.

Here in Switzerland sending cards is rarer – and I don’t send cards to most of my friends in the village who I see all the time anyway – which makes sense really as I can wish them all the joys of the season in person. I do always send cards to old friends who live abroad or who I don’t see so often though – and usually I either enclose a hand-written letter or at least a few words scribbled at the bottom of the card to let them know how life is treating us.

Only once have I resorted to a Round Robin letter – a few years ago after my own serious illness and a tragic death in the family – where there was too much too tell and I really couldn’t face going through it all again 50 times over. Really though I’m not a fan of the RR. This year so far we’ve received fewer of them. Maybe with the advent of Facebook it’s easier for us to keep up with what people are doing and they don’t need to write it all down again.

RR letters seem to be a contentious issue. While I quite enjoy seeing the odd photo of the children of old friends, sometimes the detail in the letters is such that I have no idea who they are even referring to. Do I need to know that aunt Gertie went to Blackpool with Desmond when I know neither of the people involved or that little Daisy, who I have never met, passed her grade one recorder exam? Between you and me I don’t really think so. (But maybe that just means that I’m a nasty anti-social person!)

What I really do enjoy though are the two or three sentences telling me that the kids are driving you nuts (which make me feel normal) or that you’re planning to come visit in June. It’s enough. It’s real and it’s meant for me. Sometimes – as I keep saying – less is more! On the other hand a card with just a signature and nothing more from an old friend I haven’t seen for years always seems a disappointment. As though they didn’t care enough to say hi. I’d almost rather have nothing than people just going through the motions because I’ve been on their Christmas card list since we were nine. Although I suppose that I at least know that the person is still alive!

Maybe I’m just being finicky. What do you think?

Helen

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010 at 9:59 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.