Are twentysomethings too cool to go postal?

The number of Christmas cards being sent through the post is declining steadily in some areas. Is it because young people prefer electronic greetings or are we all getting miserly?

FEWER HOUSEHOLDS in the UK will be sending Christmas cards this year, according to a study by the market-research company Mintel. The results highlight the fact that the number of people sending traditional Christmas cards has declined by 14 per cent in the past four years. With the rapid increase in digital communications, is it fair to assume that sending greeting cards will soon be a thing of Christmas past?

An Post says that although the amount of mail sent in Ireland will increase each day in the coming weeks, the overall numer of letters being sent has declined in the past two years.

“Towards the end of 2008 we had a 5 per cent decline, and we had a further 10 per cent decline in 2009. We are probably looking at another 5 per cent decline this year,” says Anna McHugh of An Post. “The postal industry is shrinking. It is a global reality.”

It is almost impossible to get specific information on how many cards are sent in Ireland every Christmas. Outside the festive season An Post handles 2.5 million pieces of mail each day; this number triples from December 8th onwards. “Last Christmas held up extremely well,” says McHugh. “I don’t think you can compare the UK experience to here. There is a different tradition in Ireland, and, even though we are a small country, we still like to send cards. We always a have higher proportion of postal mail than the average across Europe. This is to do with emigration and other social factors. The greetings-card market was still strong last year. You have to remember that you can’t put an e-mail on the mantelpiece.”

One area where the decline in Christmas cards has been noticed is the charity sector. Oxfam Ireland, which raises funds by selling cards each year, says sales so far this year have been slow. “We have seen sales of our cards decreasing over the past couple of years,” says Paul Dunphy of the charity.

“It’s still an important way of raising funds for our overseas work. Last year we generated over €100,000, but those figures are now apparently on the decline. This year especially we have heard a number of our regular customers say that they are cutting back on sending Christmas cards to save money or to help the environment. The sending of Christmas cards seems to be generational, and a higher proportion of people over 40 send cards than those who are younger.”

For a certain demographic the postal experience is becoming increasingly novel; those under 30 in particular are not sending many greetings cards.

In the early days of digital communications, seasonal e-mails and text messages were seen as offhand messages of goodwill. Now, though, thanks to better design and most people’s need to save money, sending e-mail greetings is becoming the norm.

Sharon Ní Icí, a 26-year-old television producer, stopped sending Christmas cards about four years ago. “They were nothing but insincere dust-catchers before the recession, and now they are insincere extravagances,” she says. When Ní Icí gives her close family or friends a present she includes a card; apart from that, she no longer sends or receives them. And she says many of her contemporaries have a similar view. “Stamps are expensive, particularly if you are sending 20 or 30 of them. It adds up,” she says. “I don’t get them because I don’t send them. My parents’ mantelpiece will be chock-a-block with cards. The only ones they ever remember are the ones that come from Australia.”

Ní Icí also finds it difficult to understand the tradition of close neighbours sending each other cards. She believes personal interaction is far better. “There are people who live four miles down the road from us, and they will send a Christmas card.

“There are other ways you can show people you are thinking about them at Christmas, like a phone call or calling to someone in person. A cheap card from a supermarket never did it for me.”

In contrast, Bishop Paul Colton of Cork, who is an active user of both Twitter and Facebook, says he remains an unapologetic traditionalist when it comes to sending Christmas cards.

“The irony is I am into social networking and electronic communication but when it comes to Christmas I hold a traditional line,” he says. “Usually I take a photograph during the year and that forms the front of our cards.”

Sending a card gives him an opportunity to deliver a more personal message and to keep in touch with those he has worked with overseas, he says.

We should be careful of reading too much into younger people’s lack of appetite for sending cards, he adds, as many people in their 20s never sent cards even before the online revolution. “Until I had a family I didn’t bother too much with cards either,” he says.

He notes that one of the common criticisms of many e-mail or text greetings is that they can lose the essential Christmas message and instead carry a corporate agenda. Both traditional and commercial greetings, though, may have some common ground on this, he adds.

“I personally don’t have the knowledge to devise some of the more clever electronic cards some people send,” he says. “Many of the e-mail ones are just cleverly disguised advertisements. Then again, you could say traditional Christmas cards are blatant advertising by the church as well.”