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Simplifying Holiday Cards

Photo by Okaggi
‘Tis the season.

One of the holiday traditions I keep is the sending of holiday cards. This became a nightmare a few years back because of the following reasons:

1. I was trying to honor everyone’s traditions with a specific card.
2. I felt the need to write things in the cards for people with whom we only have this one contact a year.
3. We sent cards to people from our distant past because we felt we should.
4. I tried to hand-address each card.
5. I tried to hand-write a message in each card.

At the peak, we were sending out cards to almost 100 people, and I dreaded the task. I sat down and decided it couldn’t go on the way it was, but I was unwilling to give it up entirely. Here is how I simplified:

Cutting Down The Number

I first took a look at who we were sending cards to. This corresponded to me starting to use an application I wrote. I tracks names and addresses for the people on our card list, plus whether they are permanently on the list, or if they will drop off if we don’t hear from them in two years. By eliminating the people who weren’t in contact anymore, I dropped the list down to 50.

Simplifying the Format

Before I would have Hanukkah cards, Yule cards, Christian cards and secular card. The idea was to send them something that was appropriate. However, I finally found “happy holiday” cards that I liked that were respectful of all traditions.

Next I sat down and decided who needed to be brought up to date, and who we saw regularly enough that no note was necessary. For the group that needed and update, I produced a newsletter (don’t roll your eyes, read on) and left the other as just a card. For those that get just a card, I further classified them by dividing them into email cards and paper cards. The email cards go to people for whom I have email addresses (obviously), and those who are more likely to appreciate not wasting resources to send greetings.

Everything Digital

Another big time saver was having everything digital. Since my address book is digital anyway, it was very easy to make my program accept updates from my address book. From here I can export what I need to produce labels and newsletters.

Harnessing the Power of Office

Next I put Microsoft Office to work. I needed a set of email addresses, labels for physical cards, and newsletters. Using the Mail Merge feature of Word, I can easily extract the information for printing onto labels. I also create a newsletter, with customized paragraphs for each recipient. In this year’s letter, for instance, those people whom we saw on our February vacation were told “We had a great time seeing you.” Otherwise, “We had a great trip to Florida in February, where we got to visit Mickey Mouse, NASA, and Laura’s great-uncle and his family.

Simplicity Achieved

A popular organizing site for Christmas told me to work on cards a little bit every day, aiming for one-fifth of the cards each week. By implementing the tips above, it took a total of twenty minutes to pull everything together. That’s something I can get behind.

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