Is This Tacky Or Am I Just Too Judgemental?

My uncle sent an email to everyone in the family and all of his friends (I assume) — a gazillion email addresses in the “to” and “cc” parts of the email header.  The email basically said that it was their Christmas card for the year and attached were some photos.  The photos were family photos and some pictures of the giant inflatable Santa and Snowman he’d bought for the house.

He then said that if anyone wanted a real card to email him and he’d send them one.

Apparently there were a few individual comments because the next day we got a second email indicating that “people” had “complained” about a lack of holiday letter.  So he was including the holiday letter in that email.

I know I’m fairly rare because I send out less than 20 cards a year.  I’m selective about it and rather than a holiday letter, I usually pick out a favorite recipe to tuck in with my cards — no one really wants me to rehash what’s been going on in a formal letter.

And the year I lost my job on December 12th, I didn’t send cards because, well, I was a bit depressed.

My general feeling is that a lot of people go way too overboard with the whole card-exchange and the holiday letter thing — there’s no way that everyone’s child is a genius, who are we kidding?  And, seriously?  I didn’t need to know that my 19-year-old unemployed cousin has a black Porsche — though I’d like to know if she got it before or after she finally decided to start college in January.
However,  I’m of the mind that sending an email to everyone you know with a few digital pictures attached is not very holiday-like and is kind of tacky.  You can do that anytime.  Why call it a Christmas card?  Especially since those pictures look remarkably like the pictures he mailed around shortly before Thanksgiving.

And I keep thinking, that this is supposed to be the “wealthy” side of the family.  You know, they live in the affluent neighborhood, their kid drives a Porsche, they have a big house and neat gadgets, and catered holiday meals…and they can’t go to WAL-Mart like everyone else and spend the money on a box of non-descript Christmas cards?  Heck, you don’t even have to label them yourself any more.  The computer will print your address book to labels.  All you have to do is sign your Christmas letter and stuff it in.

Then again, maybe this goes back to the thought and counting again.  It just seems to me that so few people do so little thinking these days.

tags: Christmas cards

2 comments

1. on December 12, 2006 at 4:36 pm

   Tod said:

   Yuk! I hope I don’t receive one of those! I’d rather get a cheap flimsy covered in glitter that curls up from the central heating.

2. on December 13, 2006 at 12:05 am

   Sparky said:

   No your right, you need a christmas card, a physical one. Theres nothing wrong with sending a picture email full of kids doing silly santa stuff, but send a card too! Relatives bleh

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