This past week I have delivered my Christmas cards to my work colleagues. This involved buying the cards, for a modest outlay of £1.99 I bought a small pack of 25 cards from Oxfam, spending a short amount of time, say 30 minutes writing them and walking them down to the inboxes to put them in the mail trays.
This activity, involved some of my time and my money, I even invested some emotion in the filling in of the cards, even if that emotion consisted of me writing, ‘Happy Christmas’ Hope you have a good one, Rob’ on the inside of the card. The recipients received something tangible from me.
I would hope that the festive picture on the front of the card and the message within would, for a moment or two, give them a warm fuzzy feeling that I, just a work colleague, was wishing them well for the season. They could hold it, look at it and perhaps, prop it up next to their computer, or even take it home to add to the other cards decorating their house.
What I seem to be receiving though is the new phenomenon of e-cards.
I find these e-cards pretty impersonal and almost insulting. They tend to be little more than a quick electronic wave to a multitude of recipients, i.e. those of us who populate the electronic address book of the sender.
The tone of the card is often one of jollity and fun with the sender trying to excuse their laziness with witty remarks and the message that instead of sending cards, they’ll be donating the money to charity. Well so did I by buying my cards via a charity shop, even if it was only £1.99, but I also invested my greeting with a bit of me, a bit of emotion, a bit of humanity not an electronic ghost of who I’d like to be pretending that I am being altruistic and thinking about the poor people an all.
But that’s Christmas all over isn’t it?
I’ve got a headache!
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