Blizzard of cards eases

Every December for 31 years, Omahan Allen Guidry has sent Christmas cards to about 40 relatives and friends.

He mailed cards to all of them again this year, even though he and his wife, Gracie, have received successively fewer cards in recent years. With Christmas a couple of days away, the couple had received fewer than 15 cards this year.

What keeps the 61-year-old Guidry mailing greetings, through changes in social networking and tough economic times?

“Just the spirit of Christmas, I guess,” he said.

The annual storm of holiday cards, letters and packages diminished somewhat this year, but it was still a blizzard, according to U.S. Postal Service statistics.

Nationally, the Postal Service expected to deliver 16.6 billion cards, letters and packages from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve. That would include 3 billion letters.

For the first two weeks of December, cancellations of first-class mail — including cards and letters — were down about 11 percent from 2008, said Michael Woods, a U.S. Postal Service spokesman.

Omaha's seeing a similar decline. But Nebraska and Iowa post offices are still delivering tons of holiday greetings. Local spokesman Roger Humphries said Omaha post offices canceled 890,000 pieces of mail on the last Monday before Christmas 2008. The post office topped that figure this past Monday, with 897,000.

An average mail day outside the holiday season: 150,000 to 300,000 first-class cancellations.

Humphries attributed the decrease in holiday mail to the economy and to shifts toward electronic communication. But he said that Priority Mail and Express Mail packages and letters were up more than 6 percent this holiday season over last year.

The decline in holiday mailings is smaller than the decline in mailings for the rest of the year.

It's easier (and cheaper) to send an e-mail or a tweet than a card, but maybe at the holidays, it's a little too easy, said Dr. Daniel R. Wilson, a Creighton University psychiatry professor who also has an anthropology background.

“With the formalities of the end of the year, the holidays, the religious elements of Christmas, people might go a little more in the direction of a traditional gesture,” Wilson said. “It takes more effort, and it's more old-fashioned and traditional to send a card.”

He said he didn't mean to be critical of e-cards or other electronic communication. But he still prefers to send Christmas cards. And he hoped to have finished his on Monday, the last day a card could be sent with a reasonable expectation of its arriving by Christmas Eve.

Omahan Wendy Townley is all about Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and texting by mobile phone. But she loves letter-writing, too. And when it comes to Christmas, the Internet just won't do.

“It's a personal thing for me, that I'd like to say, hey, I'm thinking of you. Merry Christmas,” Townley said. “It's a warm fuzzy.”

She mailed about 50 cards this year, as usual. In keeping with a tradition she picked up from her mother, Townley hangs the cards she receives on a coat closet door. In some past years, that display has overflowed the closet door and taken up part of the front door. This year, the closet door is only about half covered.

Omahan Maria Vazquez used to mail about 50 holiday greetings every December.

She hand-wrote cards for a few years. Then she sent family photograph cards for a few years.

This year, Vazquez mailed two Christmas cards. She sent an e-mail to some close relatives and friends. She'll see many of them.

“It's time, mainly,” Vazquez said. “I guess it's a sign of the times.”

Vazquez joined Facebook this year. Between updates on that social networking site and phone calls, she and her out-of-town family members, even those in Mexico, are up on family news all the time. So they don't need an annual Christmas card to keep in touch.

To Omahan Emily Mwaja, electronic holiday greetings are just as personal as paper cards and letters.

She's in frequent contact with far-flung family and friends through Facebook and texting. She used to send cards, but no more. She doesn't receive many, either.

“A lot of people have gone green,” Mwaja said. “For my generation — I'm 32 — and younger, we love technology.”

Wilson expects the trend toward electronic communication to continue eating away at those paper holiday cards and letters. But he predicted that the change will happen more slowly with Christmas mailing than correspondence the rest of the year, and maybe more slowly yet in the Midwest.

“It's a major cultural tradition,” Wilson said.

A quick poll this week of 14 staff members at Walt Disney Elementary School in Millard found that they had mailed a combined 455 greeting cards this year, Principal Bethany Case said. Many had sent family photograph cards.

“Most of them said it's more personal,” Case said.

Contact the writer:

444-1057, christopher.burbach@owh.com

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