Sending cards was a project with a deadline, a budget, a list and an evening allocated to it – and receiving them changed what a room looked like for a month. Here are twelve.
1. The List
A list of names was kept from one year to the next, annotated, added to and occasionally crossed off, and it lived somewhere specific with the cards.
Losing it would have been a real problem. The list is the document that ran the whole operation.
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2. The Box Bought in Advance
Cards were purchased as a box or a pack, generally well before they were needed, and the quantity was calculated against the list with a small margin.
Running out produced a second trip. The bulk box is the purchase that started the process.
3. The Evening Set Aside
Writing was done in one sitting at a table, with the list, the cards, a pen and a growing pile, and it took substantially longer than anybody had allowed.
Nobody enjoyed the second half. The writing evening is the session every household scheduled and dreaded.
4. Running Out of Things to Say
Twelve cards in, the message had been reduced to a formula, and everybody wrote essentially the same three lines to the remaining forty people.
The early ones were noticeably more effusive. Message fatigue is the phenomenon visible in any batch.
5. The Ones Delivered by Hand
Cards for neighbours and nearby people were walked round rather than posted, which involved a decision about whether to knock and a risk of being invited in.
Posting them through was the safer option. Hand delivery is the practice that turned a card into a social encounter.
6. The Ones Arriving From People You Had Not Sent To
Every year produced at least one card from somebody not on the list, which prompted an immediate emergency card, written and posted with visible haste.
The reciprocal timing gave it away. The unexpected card is the annual crisis nobody managed to prevent.
7. Putting Them Up
Received cards were displayed – on a mantelpiece, on shelves, taped to a door frame or strung on ribbon across a wall – and the display grew through December.
Every household had its own method. The display is what made the cards a decoration rather than correspondence.
8. Them Falling Down Constantly
Whatever the method, cards fell off, slid down, blew over when a door opened and were reassembled repeatedly throughout the month.
The mantelpiece was the worst offender. The collapsing display is the maintenance the tradition required.
9. Reading the Round-Robin Letter
Some cards contained a printed or photocopied letter summarising a family year, which was read aloud in a particular tone and discussed afterwards.
Everybody had strong views about them. The enclosed letter is the addition that divided opinion completely.
10. Recognising the Handwriting
You could identify who a card was from before opening it, from the writing on the envelope, and that recognition was immediate and completely reliable.
It worked for people you heard from once a year. Handwriting recognition is the skill an annual correspondence maintained.
11. The List Getting Shorter
Over years, names came off – people moved, contact lapsed, circumstances changed – and the list contracted gradually without anybody deciding to reduce it.
Nobody ever formally stopped sending to anyone. The shrinking list is the slow change nobody managed deliberately.
12. Taking Them Down
In early January the whole display came down at once, was looked through one final time, and went out – which was a surprisingly definite end to the season.
A few were kept for the pictures. Taking them down is the moment the year actually turned.
A List, a Box and One Long Evening
The whole thing ran on an annual list, a bulk purchase and a single evening of writing – and produced several weeks in which the post arrived heavily and a room was decorated with correspondence.
The eleventh item is the one people recognise afterwards. Nobody ever decided to stop sending a card to anybody. The list simply got shorter each year through ordinary drift, which means an annual correspondence that lasted decades with some people ended without either of them noticing the last one.
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