Holiday cards and stuff

[hrj]

Just dropped off the holiday cards at the post office -- what a curiously anachronistic ritual it's become. I think these are the only non-business snail-mail items I've sent all year. And yet, there are a handful of relatives and friends (although mostly relatives) where this is the only continuing contact I have with them. In most of those cases, it's a one-way contact and I have no idea whether they actually care whether they get a card or not. For the folks that I am in more regular contact with, the "chatty holiday letter" that accompanies the card is redundant, and for those I'm not in regular contact with, it may be incomprehensible.

The allergies are still killing me. I'm leaning more towards "random pollination event" since a lot of other people I bump into have the same complaint. I actually skipped the gym yesterday: either I can run or my nose can run, but we can't both run at the same time.

Had December's Research Open House last night and had a couple people show up. It's been an interesting experiment, and I've made an internal commitment to give it a full 12-month run at the least (which will go through next July) but it hasn't picked up the momentum or synergy that I was hoping for.

Comments

[julesjones]

My Christmas card list was a little more important this year, simply because it's my only means of keeping in touch with a few people, and I need to let them know I've moved. Made me realise that there are people I've had nothing but Christmas card contact with for at least ten years, and yet I would not like to lose touch with them altogether.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

One of the observations that emerges from my holiday card list is that getting on the list and getting off the list are almost unrelated functions. If you're a relative, the only way you're likely to get off the list is by moving and leaving no forwarding address. If you're a non-relative, you can leave the list by consistently failing to reciprocate with a card over a period of time that's proportional to the time you've been on the list.

To get on the list, the simple version is to start sending me holiday cards. The complicated version is to be a person I've had regular in-person interactions with over a period of several years and then have those in-person interactions cease for some non-hostile reason. (Oh, and I have to have access to a mailing address.) This means that people I know primarily on-line rarely get added to the list because there's rarely a noticeable shift in interactions (and I usually don't have a postal address).

I don't think I'd ever codified those rules until I was just thinking about it.

[(Anonymous)]

That's pretty much the conclusion I came to while doing my cards. My list has shrunk over the last few years, but that's because the people who might have been added to it are by and large people I know online, there are different cultural expectations about how to keep in touch, and I usually don't know their postal address.

[ermine-rat.livejournal.com]

In college, a friend said he was expanding his horizons by doing Christmas cards, and I had no idea what that meant. I think he was begining to notice how many people will slip away if you don't make a minimal effort in this small way once a year. There are certainly folks that I can't keep up with in any other way, and not everyone is on LJ or in the SCA. Most of the relatives want to see a picture of my son, and this works for that purpose.

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

As I know you're aware, we don't put letters into our cards, but it is just a nice thing to do. I know my face lights up when I get cards, and I hope the same happens on the other end. I just like it ... yeah, it's anachronistic, but ... well, why not? <g> I even got a card today from someone I didn't expect one from, which was nice (and like a DORK I threw away the envelope before getting the address ... d'oh!).

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

We're not quite done with the cards yet this year -- we do about 250, and have realized that it's cheaper and easier to get them Xeroxed than to print them individually -- but we're about there.

I sent a Very Few non-holiday mails this year.

If ((you're a relative or I like you) and (I know your address)) or I work with you (or have worked with you and like you) I'm likely to send a card. If I don't hear from someone in what feels like a long time, I'll likely bump them, excepting the few people who mean a lot to me.

The only times relatives have fallen off the list is when they've moved and I can't get a correct address, or they die. It takes a lot to have me kick friends off too... it's a "do I feel like I'm wasting my time on this person" vs. "do I want to risk completely losing touch with them" sort of balance.

Hope the allergies go away SOON.