Peace of Mind Organizing

The ritual of holiday cards

22 November 2006

It’s November, so my mind starts thinking about the holidays and, more specifically, about holiday cards. My husband and I don’t really do Christmas, but I do always send out cards to a long list of people. For some of those folks, it’s the only time of year I communicate with them.

I’m over 40, I’ve been doing this all my adult life and the list keeps growing. By now, it’s swelled to about 175. On top of that, I have clients and fellow organizers to send a card too, which means I’m doing two sets of cards: business and personal.

There are basically four components to the whole card-sending process: the card itself, any picture I might include, a newsy newsletter about the happenings of the previous year, and the address label.

Before 2001, I wrote a note in each card with the news of the year. It took forever, but I liked the personal touch. But in 2001 there were some canine tragedies in our family and I didn’t want to have write about them over and over so I succumbed and did a newsletter. Wow, did that make life easier. I love receiving pre-printed newsletters from my friends because I’m always hungering for news of them. So I try to make our newsletter light-hearted and informative and I hope that people don’t mind the impersonality of it. Of course, I also hand write a signature on each one.

I’ve also automated the address labels. Because people’s addresses change, I try to stay up-to-date by fixing addresses in the mailing list file as soon as I get notice of an address change (usually because a card is returned or someone sends me a card from a new address). That way, when I sit down with last year’s address list it’s already been updated. Of course, I’m not perfect and sometimes things fall through the cracks.

It’s more fun to think about the card itself and any picture we might include. I used to have prints made of a favorite picture (in our case, it was always a picture of our pets) and put them inside a folded card. Then we discovered we can easily make beautiful folded greeting cards from our own picture, which is what we did a couple of years ago with a shot of Kirby taken by professional photographer Alice Su.

Last year we took the easy way out and made one of those rectangular photo cards using a beautiful picture of Joe, our cat, and a new year’s message. We didn’t even bother with a newsletter.

But this year, I need to do a newsletter for our personal list and I want to do a folded card. I’d love to include a photo of all three animals, but that’s hard to make happen. They never seem to be close enough together to get a candid shot and if we force them together they look pained. In 2002, I managed to take an amazing candid shot of Pip and Joe, which looks posed but isn’t.

That was an insert in our holiday card that year.

So this year I had folded cards made of a photo of Pip that Alice Su took a couple of years ago. It’s Pip’s turn, after all.

For my business cards, I’m using a black and white Ansel Adams images, with a vellum insert with my logo.

So what’s the point of this rambling? Good question. It’s that I’ve come up with a system, over the years, to make sending holiday cards a pleasure, not a chore. It boils down to this:

1. Plan ahead so you’re not on a time crunch
2. Come up with a card/photo
3. Update the mailing list and print out labels
4. Decide on paper for newsletter and order it (I like Paper Direct)
5. Write the newsletter and print it out on the special paper
6. Order holiday stamps
7. Address, stuff, sign and stamp
8. Enjoy the cards that stream in from friends
9. Update my mailing list as address changes come in

It sounds like a lot. But keeping in touch with people is really important to me. So it’s a task I enjoy and do mindfully.

If holiday cards are getting you down, try to think about why you do it. If you’re not getting anything out of it, maybe you should stop, or pare down your list. If you do want to send cards but just don’t have the time, you could automate the process. At Hallmark.com you can select a card, have a personalized message printed on it, send Hallmark your mailing list, and they’ll send out the cards for you. (Snapfish will do the same—and you can make a card out of your own photo.) You never even see the cards. That’s a bit impersonal for me, but it might work for you.

Tagged with: cards, holidays, pets, photographs

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