By Carla Blackmar

If there’s one wasteful, materialistic Holiday tradition that I feel I couldn’t be without, it would be the late-Victorian tradition of sending greeting cards. I’ve liked to get and send Holiday Cards since I was a kid, and to this day I’m a little obsessive about this seasonal tradition. Not only does it give me an excuse to try to communicate with all the people I’ve lost touch with over the course of the year, but I like the sheer tangibility of the exercise; choosing the designs, writing the letter, putting stamps on the envelopes and sending them away.

My faith in the future of this tradition was badly shaken last year when I started getting electronic Holiday Cards in my Inbox. Not only were the electronic cards just as nice a break from the usual humdrum mail as real cards had been, they were compelling in almost every other way, too. The most wonderful electronic card experience last year came over the wires on Christmas Eve from the home of my aunt and uncle. Their holiday email contained a recently taken photo of their decorated living room and Christmas tree, all lit up for the holiday and accompanied by some small holiday greeting. I got the email after coming back from the late-night service at church, and while I felt I had been caught red-handed as an email junkie (the card seemed targeted at the sort of email junkies who check email on Christmas Eve), there was also something wonderful about getting the card at that time. I liked the way that I felt drawn into someone else’s celebration of the same holiday by the recentness of the picture. There was something about the electronic timing that was even more effective than the “real” paper cards that I used to love so dearly.

I was given further reason to doubt my preference of “real” cards by a second electronic card sent to me by a friend in Boston. All my friends in Boston seem very far away when I’m out in San Diego celebrating the holiday, so it was nice to get a message at all. What made me really start to question my real card preference was the environmentalist “excuse” included in the message. Framed as an apology, the gist of the message was “real cards waste resources so we’re sending an electronic one” and “by the way, Happy Holidays.” Since receiving it, I’ve not been able to look at my real cards the same way. My friend is absolutely right. While getting the real card in the mail is really nice, at the end of the season, one ends up just throwing all those beautiful designs and nice messages into the recycle bin. What else are you going to do with it?

While I will continue to send real cards to some people; those I need to write a letter to, or maybe people who I know don’t really use the internet, I am beginning to think the electronic card is a better way to go. This is not to say that my love of the real Holiday Card has abated... there are few annual events I love more than playing anthropologist, and digging through my mother’s “received Holiday Card” basket. But I see that eventually, this tradition is going to change, and I’m going to have to borrow her email password and play anthropologist on the web instead.

What do you think about the Holiday Card Tradition? Paper or Electronic?
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