Has Social Media Ruined the Christmas Card?

My husband and I used to pride ourselves on our Christmas cards. There was the cleverly art directed “Jack in the Box” one, where we forced my two-year-old son, Jack, into a box and bribed his two sisters with candy to adorn him as his jesters.

There was the one from the year we spent at Harvard before the birth of Jack, when I hired a Harvard art student to take photos of the girls, fashionably dressed in red Hannah Andersen dresses (all the rage back in 1992), among the crimson red of the subway station. What you can’t see are the rats running beneath them as we snapped this shot. What you also don’t know is that it took said Harvard student three weeks to develop the film – by which point, Christmas had passed.

My kids are older now and not so keen on being featured in our annual Christmas card mailing to our 500 closest friends (I lie not, I have the excel spreadsheet to prove it). But I’m beginning to wonder if social media hasn’t ruined the Christmas card. Why bother with stamps and envelopes if you can feature the smiling tots on Facebook trimming the tree, wearing wrapping paper as a crown, or participating in the general merriment that seems to span from Halloween to MLK day? Sitting on Santa’s lap, the tears and the joy can be Instagrammed ten times over. Who needs to buy the bad Polaroid shot anymore? For example, when MiMi took her little precious to sit on Santa’s lap, the resulting yawn of a YouTube video (featuring your typical bow-laden little innocent, dressed to the nines in velvet and crinoline and looking quite frankly clueless) got 27,000 views. Does all social media Christmas content have to be such a snooze?

I’m tempted to say “bah humbug” to social media and make a trek to the post office and buy some stamps (Have you heard the new Jimi Hendrix stamp is in stock?); but instead, I think I’ll explore some of the new possibilities that social media has to offer and spread my merriment well beyond my mailing list of 500 with my “gif” to you below!