please empty your brain below
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I send on average 39 cards per Christmas by the postal service. Here we have special stamps for the Christmas period, which means you can send a card for 50% of normal tariff.(End Nov till first week Jan). We send approx 80 to a 100 million cards which isn’t to bad for a population of 18 million.
No matter how well I make a list, there is always someone who manages to send me a card that I have forgotten to include.
YDU | 19.12.18 - 7:20 a.m. | #
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Went to the post office yesterday to post the two cards I send to Ireland. I was surprised at the complete lack of a queue. Never crossed my mind I am probably now part of a diminishing minority.
Lorenzo | 19.12.18 - 8:11 a.m. | #
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Never really into the card thing, if you see someone on a regular basis then you can do the Christmas thing in person verbally (may include cuddle) or text (may include emoji), if the only communication is an exchange of cards at Christmas, then its the equivalent of a 'Parliamentary train', retained for family politics or sentimental reasons.
Still Anon | 19.12.18 - 8:36 a.m. | #
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The queue is at the delivery office these days. Been there twice in the last month, in both cases the queue was about 50 minutes!
Southern Heights (Light Railway) | 19.12.18 - 8:36 a.m. | #
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Gah, I forgot to post the one to my in-laws in France *again*! I think at this point it's safer to bring it with me when we go for Christmas. Waste of a stamp though.
Chz | 19.12.18 - 9:06 a.m. | #
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Well, I guess Robert must live in the Emsworth/Westbourne/Southbourne area (PO10 postal district).
Still Anon2 | 19.12.18 - 9:15 a.m. | #
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Stocked up on second class stamps before the massive price hike from 36p to 50p in 2012. Felt it was a good inflation busting investment. Sadly this Christmas sees the last of those stamps making it to the post box.
ap | 19.12.18 - 9:30 a.m. | #
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I send about 40. I have a little notebook in which I have recorded those I've sent cards to, and the gifts bought since 1987. Sadly I only have another 2-3 pages left in it now, but it's fascinating to look back through!
1960s: 11
1970s: 3
1980s: 6
1990s: 15
2000s: 3
2010s: 2
Cornish Cockney | 19.12.18 - 9:31 a.m. | #
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Definitely a cultural change surrounding Christmas Cards and greeting cards in general.
Maybe in a few years time, the 2020s "trendy" types will rediscover cards and make such "old school" forms of greeting trendy again?
Mikey C | 19.12.18 - 9:50 a.m. | #
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I went hi-tech when I was working and set myself up an Excel spreadsheet with all the Xmas card addresses. In those days I could then quickly mail merge and print labels which made the job easy peasy. Nowadays I still update the list but have to hand-write the envelopes. Every year I cut down the number of cards. It's an expensive exercise these days.
Caz | 19.12.18 - 10:09 a.m. | #
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Price of a dozen 2nd class stamps...
1968: 20p (4/-)
1978: 84p
1988: £1.68
1998: £2.40
2008: £3.00
2018: £6.96
diamond geezer | Homepage | 19.12.18 - 10:21 a.m. | #
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The Spanish don't generally send Christmas (or birthday) cards, so I didn't have to queue at the post office; but perhaps this is changing. In my local newsagents yesterday I noticed cards on display - a choice of two different packs. A customer asked: "Have you any Christmas cards? I want two". "We only have these packs of ten". "Well I'll take one; perhaps the others will come in useful".
Suse | 19.12.18 - 10:35 a.m. | #
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Interestingly it is cheaper to post christmas cards from Hong Kong to the UK than it would be to send them within the UK. It costs HK$4.9 which is the equivalent of 49 pence.
Alan | 19.12.18 - 10:38 a.m. | #
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FWIW, those price increases expressed as percentages:
1968-78: 320%
1978-88: 100%
1988-98: 43%
1998-2008: 25%
2008-18: 132%
@Suse: Thanks for mine.
Jonathan Wadman | 19.12.18 - 11:01 a.m. | #
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got the Christmas card receiving thing down to 0 (zero)...assisted by the fact i now have no fixed address. i may send 2 or 3 "Christmas/season greetings texts"...just because i grumpy doesn't mean i can't wish joy & happiness for others!
Grumpy Anon | 19.12.18 - 11:05 a.m. | #
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2008: £3.00 --> 2018: £6.96
Royal Mail was privatised in 2014.. go figure.
dg writes: The huge price hike was in April 2012.
Frank F | 19.12.18 - 11:15 a.m. | #
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Because I have a largish overseas list (I lived abroad from 26 years), I took advantage of passing through Hong Kong at the beginning of December to send them from there (most were to France, but there were five other countries as well). Since an airmail stamp only cost me the equivalent of 48p, I'm rather wishing I'd written my UK cards early and posted them back from Hong Kong. They seem to take about four days.
Martin | 19.12.18 - 11:25 a.m. | #
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We still use mail merge as mentioned above. But it's a bit fiddly. But printing straight onto the envelopes.
We are still sending cards to a few people who haven't communicated for over 10 years. Each year we think about taking them off the list; but then we put off the decision until next year.
Malcolm | 19.12.18 - 11:50 a.m. | #
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I've been trying to get to zero for a number of years now. Shocked to receive card from distant connection that had previously fallen off the list. It won't be acknowleged in a return card but it does make me wonder what memory of me prompted the sending.
B | 19.12.18 - 1:41 p.m. | #
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The price hike in 2012 was part of the preparation to make the Post Office privatization friendly.
Still Anon | 19.12.18 - 2:02 p.m. | #
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There are many people (DG included) who I partly don’t send cards to because I don’t know where they live. But if I see them in person in December I take one along. But I don’t like to ask for addresses unless I have a better reason to do so than spending £1 sending bits of cardboard around the place.
Kirk | 19.12.18 - 6:39 p.m. | #
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There is no second class option for mailing cards in the US. That means the cost of posting 28 cards would be over 11 pounds; over 40p each. Postage for a card sent overseas is almost 1 pound each. Sending Christmas cards is definitely a dying activity here, too.
Mary | 19.12.18 - 7:50 p.m. | #
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@still anon
The Royal Mail was privatised, not the Post Office
Even after thirty years, it is quite easy to identify "his" and "hers" on our household's card list, as all but one of the addressees on the list go back further than that - more than half are, to quote WSGilbert, my sisters and my cousins - who are numbered in their dozens - and my aunts. (The one exception, and the only one from the present century, is my brother's in-laws)
The addresses cover fifteen counties, ranging fairly evenly from Devon (the only county other than London with more than two) to Northumberland.
timbo again | Homepage | 19.12.18 - 9:46 p.m. | #
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DG should have bought 500 stamps 20 years ago,
This year I've just finished using up my stamps from 1994.
Talking about Hong Kong, my uncle used to do what Martin does, but he bought 2000 stamps in 1988, of which 1000 became worthless shortly after it reverted to China (as he was not able to travel to Hong Kong to exchange them). I still have the uncut sheets.
And linked to this, I made the acquaintance of a stamp dealer in the USA who has been holding on to old genuinely unused British stamps since the 1990s and will accept 45p per 2nd class from me.
John | 20.12.18 - 12:09 a.m. | #
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I hope they're Bus Stop M Christmas cards!
Sam | Homepage | 20.12.18 - 11:27 a.m. | #
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...odd nobody mentioned the lovely pic
E | 20.12.18 - 3:52 p.m. | #
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