Holiday cards may be intended to spread cheer, but they can have the adverse effect of being stressful to both send and receive. Proponents say they love to share a piece of themselves with loved ones. Detractors see long, braggy letters with bad grammar.
Adam Groffman, who works in marketing and lives in New York City, enjoys cards as a physical touch point with faraway friends and family.
“It’s nice to get an annual update,” he said, “even if it doesn’t necessarily trigger me to keep much more in contact than beyond the occasional Instagram or Facebook like.”
If sending out a card is on your to-do list, the right tools will make it faster, easier and more efficient as Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa coincide to create a trifecta of holiday spirit.
Follow these grammar guidelines
While there is no grammar jail (as much as some people might think there should be), getting the basic rules right is important. “Our brains are wired in a certain way to react when we encounter bad grammar and punctuation,” said Jeffrey Barg, a grammar expert. “I have absolutely received cards that have wished me ‘happy holidays’ but then they pluralize the family’s last name with an apostrophe and you know what? All of a sudden everything is a little less merry for me.”
Shortcuts to creating a mailing list
If you’re sending cards in the mail, organizing addresses should be your first priority. “Get the list ready as soon as humanly possible,” said Victoria Hiegel, a personal assistant and musician in New York City who posts “a day in the life” videos on social media. “I guarantee you will accidentally forget someone and you want time to remember and add them in.” (Make sure you order a few extra cards in case you do forget someone, so that you can quickly address and mail that card out.)
Maintaining a spreadsheet of names and addresses that you use year after year seems to be the most common way to tackle this problem. Kathleen Boyce, of Belmont, North Carolina, who is Barg’s mother-in-law, has a list of about 175 people that she updates before printing new labels every year.
If you’re starting from scratch, social media creators have suggested building a Google form and sending a link out to loved ones to collect their addresses. You can then convert the responses into a spreadsheet or .csv file to print labels.
Apps and websites can also be helpful. Many card sites allow you to upload your contacts and provide a link you can send out to collect and store any addresses you don’t already have. Minted will even address the envelopes for you for free.
Gather photos (but no one says you have to use them)
Photo cards have become common, but they’re not mandatory.
“Buy cards where you can just have the paragraph that you’ve already written,” said Heigl, who suggested adding handwritten well wishes in addition to the printed ones. “For your special besties, then you can go in when you’re packing the cards and write a cute little note. Like, ‘Hope your dog is great!’”
If you do want to include photos, Google Photos, Amazon Photos and Apple Photos all allow the users to search by people, dates, locations and other parameters to help them find the photos they want to include.
Photos cards can become keepsakes, marking time as each year passes. Katherine Fernandez, a stay-at-home mother in West Caldwell, New Jersey, has been sending cards from Minted since her daughter was born in 2018. She has a professional photo of her family taken every year and then puts the completed card in a clear acrylic frame and displays it on her front hallway table for guests to view.
Build the card
Services to design and print personalized cards abound. Wirecutter, The New York Times’ product recommendation service, chose Simply to Impress as its top holiday card site. Local printing options became more limited after Costco outsourced its photo services to Shutterfly in early 2023, but if you’re working up to the last minute, places like Walgreens and CVS can print either online or in their brick-and-mortar stores. And keep an eye out for Black Friday sales that reduce the cost of these services — you’ll still be able to receive the physical cards in time for mailing in December.
To letter or not to letter?
For some people, just putting the card together is enough. But for others, the letter is an important piece of the tradition. “It’s an old-fashioned way to keep in touch, and it’s the kind of stuff you wouldn’t say in a text or a phone call,” said Boyce, noting that she includes both good and bad news in her letter, such as the death of her father. “I think most of the people would have already known that he died. But I think people still enjoy seeing a silly picture of him, of which there are many.”
Sending out the cards
Mailing the card out — including stuffing, addressing and stamping the envelope — can be another form of connection. Fernandez, who sends cards to her extended family in Peru, treats it as “mommy and me” time with her 7-year-old daughter. As they stamp each envelope, they talk about the person who will be receiving it.
What happens if you don’t mail them out on time? It could lead to a delightful surprise at another time of the year.
Groffman intended to send out about 100 cards in 2023, but he wasn’t able to order them in time. Instead, he went to the post office and bought postcard, first-class U.S. and international stamps to stockpile at home. “All year, I’ve made a concerted effort to send thank-you cards and postcards for things various friends and family have done,” he said. “And I’m going to keep with that tradition going forward.”
Boyce manages to order and print her Shutterfly cards every year but doesn’t always send them out, she said. One year, she sent the cards in March. Another time, she sent three years’ worth of cards in December. And this year, that’s happening again, with three cards at once.
“Stay in touch and keep those ties,” Boyce said. “It’s just like a warm hug, no matter when you receive it.”
