Say No To Santa

How many jolly ol’ Santa Cards did you receive this year? Have you noticed that you are receiving - and sending - fewer than ever before? I spoke to several determined Season’s Greetings senders, and they all agree that it is harder than ever before to get them bought, written, addressed, stamped and sent in time to arrive before Australia Day, let alone turn up before December 24.They all agreed that this time of year is just too busy to be sitting down to a stack of cards and a lengthy address book. Gone are the days when each recipient would receive a hand written, personal note.

It seems that these days it’s ok to send a One Newsletter Suits All type of season’s greeting. Gone are the personalised messages.

The danger with this is that the recipient always knows when they have received the bog-standard newsletter. While this may help to ease the guilt of the sender by having informed everyone of how their year has been, it leaves the recipient with an odd feeling of having been on the receiving end of a piece of correspondence that shouts “It’s the thought that counts.”

For my mind this isn’t good enough. If all you can manage at the end of the year is an impersonal card, or including everyone in a bulk mailing newsletter, then I would much prefer to be taken off that list and put on the one that says: “Call her often throughout the year.”

The generic end of year newsletter and Season’s Greetings cards just show me how much the sender doesn’t care to write a personal note.

So what are you so busy doing this time of year, if you only have time to send out these token gestures? Isn’t writing a personal card or note part of the seasonal business? What other things are consuming your busy time?

Doing too much is the short answer. Too much shopping, too much partying, too much working, the kids too busy as well. Always the things which are under your nose and make the most noise will get the most attention.

The quiet list of names and addresses, of those friends and relations who would cherish a personal letter from you are the ones that lose out. These folk don’t make a sound, they never complain that they are feeling personally neglected, that their seasonal celebrations are dulled somewhat by receiving a generic note, or worse yet, a pre-printed card with just your name scribbled in gold glitter ink at the bottom.

Perhaps it’s time to stop being so busy with the busy-ness and the emptiness of the Santa Season and start spending time on the personal and meaningful.

Forget the cards and generic newsletter notes this year. Quit kidding yourself that it’s the thought that counts. The generic nature of the correspondence shows what your thoughts really are: non-personal.

Instead, go for the personal and spend time on it. Look at your Christmas Card list and decide which are the people with whom you want to really have a relationship. Be in contact with those people on a real basis - throughout the year make that telephone call, go visit. Communicate with them. Have a relationship, not just an exchange of meaningless cards once a year.

If there are some on your card list you wouldn’t bother to do anything more than send a card, then fine, delete them off your list and out of your life.

De-cluttering the Christmas card list is a great way to bring real relationships back into your life and remove the guilt of never having enough time to send a proper message to all those people.

This entry (Permalink) was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 9:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site.