Did you receive Christmas cards? Real ones? Strong paper? In an envelope with a stamp? How much ? A ? Two ? Three ? Big max. My tablet has never been so empty. Already that wasn't what it was. This year, the conflict at Canada Post seems to have sounded the death knell for this ancestral tradition.
Published at 5:00 a.m.
Ironically, it was a British postal official, Sir Henry Cole, who created the first Christmas card in 1843 with the help of illustrator John Callcott Horsley. It showed a family celebrating Christmas and it cost one shilling. The Royal Mail wanted to encourage the middle class to use its services.
It is therefore not the need which created the company, but the company which created the need. A very common practice.
Because, when you think about it, why the hell send Christmas cards? There are no Easter, Patriots' Day, Midsummer's Day, Canada Day or Thanksgiving cards. Most of the Christmas cards we send are to people we're going to see anyway during the holidays, people to whom we're going to express our wishes in person.
Why self-disclose? It's still nice that we don't send Christmas cards to the people we live with, although it would be a good way to test the effectiveness of the post. How long does it take for a letter to get back to where it came from? Certainly less time than negotiating a collective agreement.
The Christmas card is useful in very specific cases. If we address it to distant relatives, dear friends living abroad. “Christmas” starts with “no” like “nostalgia”. This is why this old-time practice suits old-time friends too.
Christmas card aficionados spare no effort to make it attractive. The entire family is involved, posing or rather freezing in snowy settings.
You find this too muchtoo pushed when you receive one? Don't judge. Putting a tree in your living room, with lights in it, is too muchAlso. Hanging your stockings on the edge of the fireplace, wearing ugly sweaters, drinking eggnoglistening to the Chipmunks sing in chorus except Alvin, letting a stranger drive your float, everything during the holiday season is too much! So family photos in snowflakes are in season.
The Christmas card is the ancestor of Instagram. What users of the social network strive to do every day, offer themselves in images to those around them, holiday letter writers have been doing it once a year for decades.
Their likesis when recipients call them to tell them that their card is beautiful. It doesn't matter the way, as long as we have recognition.
But it is precisely the Instagram, Facebook and TikTok of this world that ensure that the tradition of Christmas cards is not passed on to new generations. They send messages to acquaintances, near or far, on a daily basis. Instantly. Without depending on handling.
This means that Christmas cards become the business of business people: real estate agents, car dealerships, private clinics, hair salons, financial services, constituency offices. All these entrepreneurs have found a way to avoid finding their advertisements directly in the recycling. A photo of a winter landscape, and presto, we spend two weeks on the fireplace.
With the economic crisis being what it is, businesses are increasingly choosing to send their holiday greetings electronically. The effect is not the same. Their emails quickly end up in the trash, when they don't go directly to our spam folder.
All this situation means that the Sir Henry Cole Christmas card will not last long. Keep the ones you receive, they will become collector's items.
The postman may deliver some to you tomorrow. That would be limiting. Better late than January. The Christmas card, ideally, should be received at least a week before the festivities, its role being similar to that of the press release, a reminder that an important event is approaching.
Strike required, they remained a dead letter. Here they are resurrected. Looking forward to reading them.
In closing, here is mine for you, readers.
I wish you the happiest of Christmases. And I'm sure it will be. Above all, I hope you appreciate it now, not wait ten years from now, when you say: Christmas 2024 was the good time.
The good times are now.
Enjoy!
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