Design Crafters

Personalizing Christmas greeting cards is a trend I just love to see.  Not that there is anything wrong with receiving cards that have lovely reproductions of wintertime scenes or christmas lights on the front of them, but there’s just something really wonderful about seeing our friends and families and their smiling faces on the front of the cards we receive.

This is just one of the many beauties of photo Christmas cards. You can add any picture and any phrase you’d like, with just about any sort of theme you could imagine.  It means a lot more to have a personalized card like that. Think about it…When you receive Christmas cards in the mail, which ones do you notice? Which ones mean more? A certain family member of mine saw me writing this blog post and answered “the ones with the money in them.” That’s not quite what I meant, but had to laugh anyhow. Somebody’s getting a lump of coal in their stocking!

I’m sure I’m not alone in that when I receive Christmas cards with pictures and/or a personal note, those mean so much more to me than a pre-printed impersonal message.  I can also put the photo greeting cards in a photo album.  The recipients of your Christmas cards are likely to enjoy such cards from you, too.

These days, many families are starting up their own home-based businesses.  But they find themselves faced with a bit of a dilemma…how to let faraway friends and family know about the new business venture?  One great solution we have is to send out Christmas cards from the new business.  The holidays are a perfect excuse for sending a card, but holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving are busy times of the year for most people. If you want to send a card that is connected to these holidays, send them a few weeks or a month early. It’s not uncommon for people to receive Christmas cards the week after Thanksgiving, and is actually a great way to make sure your card will not get lost in the shuffle.

Many companies send out greeting cards with some kind of discount coupon or some other kind of offer. Maybe that would be a great thing to do for your family’s new home-based business.  Of course, it’s not required, nor do you don’t need to send them an offer every time. Just saying a nice thank you is enough for them to remember your company, your logo (put in on the envelope) and your brand. If you send an offer at every single mailing, you’re bordering on advertising, and you run the risk of people throwing away your card because they know it’ll just be another ad.

You may also want to consider if this special company Christmas card will be focused solely on your new home-based business, or if it’ll be doing double-duty and letting everyone know about your family’s year.   Either way, it can be a great way to get the word out to a receptive audience of potential customers or clients.

If you are someone who loves to save old letters and Christmas cards, you already understand what a potential future treasure trove your old Christmas cards will be to you one day. Just think: if you can get such a kick out of looking at old photos and holiday greetings, your someday grandchildren and great-grandchildren might find it even more fun to see them.

A large part of why millions of people worldwide send Christmas cards to their family and friends is to stay in touch and to send out holiday greetings and well-wishes. After all, the “trend” of sending Christmas cards is now well into its second century…and still going strong.

Another reason that so many folks wouldn’t even consider not sending out Christmas cards one year is because the cards themselves are memories in the making. They make a fantastic snapshot of the times of the family who might be sending the cards For example, it’s rather likely that at one point or another, you’ve looked at old Christmas cards and said to someone,“oh look at this old family photo on the card; can you believe that little Susie Q hadn’t even been born yet?” Or perhaps your family is the kind who can date a photo on a Christmas card going by the house that the photo was taken in (“that’s definitely the house in Springfield. Oh, I haven’t thought of that house in years.”). And of course there’s the ever-popular past-time of being both amused and slightly embarrassed by the clothing choices you might’ve made 20 years ago, as in “wow, I wore some really big glasses back then. Those were very stylish at the time, if you can believe it.”

Would it be a true American family holiday card if the family pet wasn’t featured in it, front and center?  Okay, sure, we know…not every single American family has a family pet, let alone one that is photo-worthy come Christmastime.  But judging by the number of Christmas cards that flood through our lives that do indeed feature Man’s Best Friend in festive holiday garb right next to the human members of the family, it’s not that unusual.

Looking at the statistics, it’s likely that you or someone you know might even take their children to see Santa each year, and to treasure the photographs they take there each year.  And many pet families are the same way, so there are pet dogs and cats who visit Santa each Christmas and have their photos taken there (often for use on the family’s Christmas card).  We say why not?  After all, even our four-legged friends should get to enjoy the joy and wonders of the Christmas season.  No one would argue with you if you said that the holidays are a time for enjoying the Christmas spirit with friends and family.  For many people (over 60% of American households, according to some sources), some very important members of their family are their pets.  As a result, it’s becoming more and more popular to include a family pet or pets in the family photo that often ends up on a Christmas card that’s mailed out far and wide.

More than ever before, in many cases, the family pets – be they cats, dogs, ferrets, birds, or whatever other furry or feathered friend – are treated as the family’s children, and indeed, many such households are childless but still consider themselves families.  As such, many households with beloved pets are going all out during the holiday season, much as proud parents of human children would do.  Special holiday taste treats, adorable cat-sized Santa hats or toy reindeer antlers for dogs to wear, and of course, their own special Christmas stocking to hang on the mantel that can be filled with pet toys and treats to be opened on Christmas morning.  They’ll be just as joyful as the children.

Enjoying your Labor Day, or are you feeling bad about the lack of holiday mail that goes out on this holiday weekend? Even when we’re talking about keeping the post office busy with our holiday mail, Christmas still ranks number one (Valentine’s, again, holds that number two spot). The United States Post Office estimates that, between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, it processes somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 million first-class cards (we’re assuming Christmas cards are a huge part of that number) in the mail. Americans keep our mailmen (and mailwomen) working hard delivering our Christmas cards.

One interesting thing we learned from Forbes Magazine, who recently ranked holidays that trigger the most consumer spending here in the United States and the top three.  Those holidays are, in this order: Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s Day.   Are you shocked that Labor Day isn’t on that list?  Actually, probably not, as more people celebrate this particular holiday with picnics and barbeques and an unofficial farewell to summer kind of party than in other ways.  Hope you have a wonderful Labor Day this year and we look forward to seeing all those Christmas cards in the mailbox very soon.

Something’s in the air.  These days, you can’t go more than a day or two without hearing a lot about going green (or, environmentally friendly).  It sure makes sense to go green with houses, with cars, with your family’s food, and even with cleaning supplies, but have you ever wondered if you can you go green with Christmas cards?  Sure, you can!  It’s actually rather easy to go green with Christmas cards.  To begin with, you can select cards or envelopes made with recycled paper.  That’s a fantastic way to make it a green holiday.

But once the season is over, you can still make it a green Christmas.  How?  Well, when you’re taking down your decorations, your Christmas tree, or Christmas lights, there’s one more thing you probably take down that you don’t even realize could be recycled.  That’s right:  your Christmas cards that you’ve received from faraway friends and family, that you’ve perhaps put on your mantel or in your entryway, to enjoy the entire season.  They can be recycled, just like newspapers, cardboard, magazines, or old notebooks from your college economics classes.

Many times, many places you go today you’ll hear many people talk about the wisdom of recycling Christmas cards, of giving new life to the cards that would otherwise end up boxed in the attic or in a trash bin somewhere.  Personally, I like that idea very much, but only if I can still keep the cards with family photos on them.  I consider those ones to be simply too precious to recycle.

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Have you ever had a holiday season where you’ve repeatedly thought about friends or family you haven’t spoken to in ages and wondered how they’re doing?  Many people think back on their lost friends and relatives with regret, knowing that they can’t go back in time to undo the argument but wishing that perhaps there was some way to repair the damaged relationship. That’s just where Christmas cards come into play.

You’re wondering just how can Christmas cards make a huge difference in a long-lost friendship or family relationship?  While a great many people think of Christmas cards as a simple way to keep in touch with friends and family and pass along holiday greetings, it’s worth noting that the cards are also a means to ending estranged relationships.  We’ve seen it happen ourselves.  All it takes is one card, one sincerely felt, genuinely friendly Christmas card to an old friend or formerly dear family member, and then you very well may get a phone call or letter shortly afterwards from them, relieved and happy to have heard from you after all those years and wanting, just like you, to resume the relationship. Granted, it’s not a guaranteed way back into someone’s life, but it’s surprising how many times that a gesture like a Christmas card will be an effective truce to an argument.

It’s obvious, really, when you think of it like this:  the holiday season is a time of love, friendship, and sharing happy times with others. So it makes sense that it would also be a time of reconciliation and forgiveness among friends and family, as well. Keep that in mind when you next begin writing out your annual Christmas card list…is there someone you miss having in your life who should be getting a card from you?  Consider sending them a note this holiday season.

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Do you spend a lot of time on eBay or at antique shows hunting for that last collectible to round out your collection?  You just might have a collection!  More and more all the time, we see that people have all kinds of collections:  china figurines, photos of elephants, movie memorabilia, circus paraphernalia, anything and everything to do with the Wild West, baseball cards, comic books, you name it, someone out there surely collects it!  One type of collection that has been popular for a very long time has been autographs. 

Autograph collections are an interesting kind of collection to see, as people often have all kinds of things autographed for their collections:  baseball cards, cocktail napkins, inside frontispiece of books, teeshirts, movie posters, photographs, and of course the time-tested favorite:  a scrap of paper.    One man in England who was recently recognized as a world-class autograph collector (he auctioned off his collection for 50,000 pounds!) says he put together his collection by writing to people to ask for their autographs, and many famous people complied, sometimes by postcard, letter, or even Christmas cards. 

Now comes a bit of a surprise:  it’s more than likely that you’re an autograph collector, as well.  Sure, you’ll find that most peoples’ autograph collections generally feature the autographs of famous people (actors, musicians, politicians, religious leaders, to name a few), but there are also some folks do collect the autographs of friends and family.  Don’t believe me?  Well, next time you’re putting away your Christmas decorations and you find yourself saving the stack of Christmas cards that you received, you might just realize that you are, in a way, collecting your family and friends’ autographs!  Years from now you might pull out those stacks of cards and enjoy looking through them to see old familiar handwriting of your grandmother, best friend from college, or your niece when she was in the first grade.

While it’s true that Santa Claus started as a real person, Saint Nicholas, a minor saint from the fourth century, the popular view of  Santa thing that we celebrate today, along with all the crazy things surrounding Santa like the sleigh, the flying reindeer and the chimney, all cam largely from two publishing events that occurred in the 1800’s and one advertising campaign in this century.

Clement Moore wrote "The Night Before Christmas" in 1822 for his family. It was picked up by a newspaper, then reprinted in magazines and it spread like wildfire. He finally admitted authorship in 1838. If you read the poem, you will fine that he names the reindeer, invents the sleigh, comes up with the chimney and the bay of toys, etc. Nearly everyone in America has been able to recognize or recite this poem since the 1830s.

Between 1863 and 1886, Harper’s Weekly (a popular magazine of the time)
ran a series of engravings by Thomas Nast. From these images come the
concepts of Santa’s workshop, Santa reading letters, Santa checking his
list and so on. Coca-Cola also played a role in the Santa image by
running a set of paintings by Haddon Sundblom in its ads between 1931
to 1964.

The red and white suit came, actually, from the original Saint
Nicholas. Those colors were the colors of the traditional bishop’s
robes. Of course you can see Santa dressed in what became the traditional red and white furry Santa Claus suite in many Christmas cards offered today.

If your budget is tight, there are many things you can do to
give more from yourself this Christmas that may even be more appeciated than an expensive item
that is just a trinket and not a necessity anyway. There is something to the
old saying, "It’s what’s in the heart that counts." If you give of
your time to make something from your heart, it often has more impact that
something that took no time to purchase.

Use the skills you have to make homemade Christmas presents. We already talked about a lot of
different gift basket ideas. If you can cook, make cookies or fudge or even
candy. If you can sew, make some cushion covers to coordinate with your
friend’s room scheme. If you are good at arranging flowers, make a cute
Christmas arrangement using florist’s foam and put it in an inexpensive shallow
bowl. Use berries, cones and foliage that you can get for free or very
inexpensively at a craft shop.

Grand parents usually don’t need anything new and are usually happiest to receive
framed photographs of their precious grandchildren. The collage types are
particularly welcome. Just include a nice hand signed; personalized Christmas
card with any of these items and any of them would be much appreciated. Next
time I will discuss a few more inexpensive Christmas gift ideas.