Have Christmas cards become obsolete? With e-cards that provide a multimedia experience and scrapbooking services that allow for customized slide shows, sending a card through the mail seems almost quaint.

Since my college days, I've considered that Christmas cards were an excuse to reflect on the last year and catch up with friends who I had not talked to in a long time. Back then, before PCs (yes, I am THAT old,) my cards were scribbled with long-hand descriptions of how I was feeling after finals week, my hopes for the future and whether we would have a white Christmas. It took hours to write my cards.

When PCs came along, I wrote a Christmas letter once and added a line or two to each copy.

Photo by WordRidden

I started getting lazy a few years ago, after I created an e-card to send to my ezine distribution list. Hitting send was so much easier than digging for correct addresses and buying stamps and cards. Only my college friends, the ones who had sent cards through numerous address changes and faithfully provided school photos of their kids, warranted a card through snail mail. My list had gotten noticeably smaller.

Now, with tools like Facebook and LinkedIn, I know a lot more about my friends–things like whether they have changed jobs and how they enjoyed that trip to Italy. In fact, if I'm following someone on Twitter, I probably know a lot more than I'd want to know in a Christmas letter, including what they are reading, their views on politics, and whether they got a good night's sleep over the last week. I'm caught up more than I want to be.

Still, I wanted to send Christmas cards this year. I wrote my Christmas letter and added some photos, stuffed envelopes, placed stamps and return labels, and found sheets of paper scribbled with addresses that I knew to be still good.

What I realized is that writing cards gave me the sense of re-connecting to each person, to think about their situation in life and to express a little love, long distance. With boxes of different styles of cards, I could pick out just the right one for each person. The sparkly green one with "fa la la!" on the front for my girly girlfriends and the Snoopy and Woodstock one for my brothers and the traditional Happy Holidays for an older retired friend.

I sent a lot more cards than in previous years. It felt good. 

This holiday season seems to be geared to going back to the basics–connecting with loved ones, appreciating what we have instead of what we don't have, and being grateful for the small things in life. 

Are you sending cards this year? And if so, what are you noticing about the experience?

Photo by Adam Buteux