Do You Still Send Christmas Cards?

Yup. My father managed G.C. Murphy stores his entire career. Back in the day, they were all located in the old classic retail districts. Somehow, malls are not the same.

 

Sending and receiving Christmas cards was a big thing each year when I was growing up. First, my mom made a trip to Spokane and we shopped several stores until she found just the right boxes of cards.
Once she had the cards, then she wrote short letters/messages on the back of each card, and then both she and my dad signed the cards. Once I was old enough to write and sign my name, then I signed each card, too.
For people we usually saw a lot during the year, Mom didn’t write letters on the back, so the card was just a basic card to let them know that we remembered them at Christmas.

We did this early in December, and then Christmas cards would start coming back to us, which my mother put out on the top of the buffet where we could look at all of them each day. For people we didn’t see or talk to because they lived too far away, those Christmas cards were the only thing we ever heard from them, or they heard from us, each year. People did not make long distance phone calls unless it was very important, and letters were the only oher form of communication with people who lived in another town, so getting the Christmas cards and news updates was a special thing to my parents, and probably to most people , back then.

Now, people just text, message, or call each other anytime we want, so that Christmas card tradition seems to pretty much be a thing of the past for most people, including us.

 

This reminds me of all the times I would shop the after-Christmas sales and pick up boxes of cards on sale, and pack them away with the rest of the Christmas stuff. Then I would go through them next year, picking out a card for each recipient. There always seemed to be a few cards that remained in the box forever, never right for anyone on my list.

 

I am pretty sure that my mom probably did that also, @John Brunner.
She loved the beautiful Christmas tree decorations, but they were really expensive, so after Christmas was when she bought new decorations to use on the tree the next year, and probably also bought leftover cards and other christmas stuff when it was on closeout.
Actually, we all enjoyed the Christmas tree so much that we always left it up until after my birthday in January, and if it was holding up and not too dry, sometimes we left it up until Valentine’s Day.
The new ornaments could then be used on the tree (if there was room) on the same year that Mom bought them in the after Christmas sale,