As a child, I always remember my grandmother getting Christmas cards, usually starting the first week of December. She’d place them all over the huge bay window along with her decorations, and I’d marvel at them as they accumulated. My other grandmother had her piano absolutely covered in them from December 1st through January.
Now I consider how many cards we’ve gotten in the last few years — maybe one or two per season? It’s a tradition that is more often than not going out of style, and that’s very unfortunate. The feeling of going to your mail and, in the midst of all the ads and bills, finding a colorful card with warm greetings is impossible to replicate with email or Facebook posts.
If you’ve got fond memories of Christmas cards or the concept simply sounds interesting, keep reading. We’ve got some great tips for dipping your toe into the holiday card experience or upping your Christmas card game if you’re a seasoned pro.
Recruit Your Kids
Nothing resonates with the holidays more than the love and wonder of children. Getting a holiday card with a message of season’s greetings from a child is the height of holiday cheer.
This is also a good exercise in writing for your younger children. Have them write their own well-wishes and draw a picture. If they’re not great at drawing or prefer coloring, a quick Pinterest search will pull up thousands of card templates for them to color and customize. This is also a good time of year to get their most recent school photos out to friends and family they don’t see often.
Try Your Hand at a New Hobby
Personal card-making is a creative, fun hobby with a practical purpose. Many hobby outlets sell cutting dies, card stock, stamps, and other decorative accessories.
Especially around this time of year, you can find plenty of starter sets for card making. If you poke around on Facebook or Pinterest, I guarantee you have at least one friend who does it that could help teach you.
The key isn’t getting wrapped up (har har) in making the perfect card. Rather, you should focus on the zen of creative pursuit that allows you to express yourself while engaging in a cherished holiday tradition.
Even if your cards look a hot mess, your friends will be stoked to get them.
Utterly Wow Your Friends and Family
If you’re ready to dive headlong into the next level of holiday Christmas cards, you can enlist the help of a professional. Basic Invite is revolutionizing the holiday card and invitation process with layers of customization. With over 180 colors to choose from and nearly unlimited combinations of those colors, you have complete creative control over your card-making. They’ll even print you a sample of your card before you commit to buying, letting you see exactly what you’re getting.
You can even customize the color of the envelopes your cards get mailed in! They’ve got stock photos and illustrations, but of course, you can add photos of your family, decorations, or a really cool cloud if it tickles your fancy. There’s even an option to apply a foil layer to the cards in gold, silver, and rose gold, which, after a childhood of collecting Pokemon cards, carries a certain appeal.
Whether you’re looking to invoke the ancient tradition of holiday cards or you’re mulling around Christmas party invitation ideas. Basic Invite is a great place to get it all together. Their intuitive address capture tool allows you to post on Facebook, Twitter, etc, asking for your friends and family to provide their addresses for correspondence. Basic Invite will store this information and allow you to autofill it when you go to create cards, printing it on the envelopes for you. All you have to do is get them to the post office!
Indulge in a Classic Tradition
No matter how you engage in the holiday card exchange, it’s a fantastic tradition to pass on to younger generations. It’s also a great way to brighten someone’s day, especially older family and friends for whom holiday cards were a fact of life.
Whether you make them yourself, enlist the help of your kids, or go through a professional card maker like Basic Invite, Christmas cards are a tradition worth keeping.
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The post Reconnect With Friends by Keeping the Christmas Card Tradition Alive first appeared on Thrifty Guardian.
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