Merr-e-card Christmas

### Andrew E. King

**One piece of advice that I try and stick to is that you should aim to be a person that the past version of yourself would be proud of. All things considered, I think this is quite a good piece of advice. Unfortunately, though, past-me was a bit of an idiot, and though some would argue present-me still is, a very clear example of this is my recent compromise on the value of e-cards.**

Christmas cards are a large part of my family traditions. My mum works in a primary school and as such, around December 20th every year our house is inundated with poorly spelt Christmas cards to ‘The King Family’ wishing us a ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Bon Noel’ or whichever message they picked from that familiar multi-pack of cards sold across the entire county, and as such we’ve taken to returning the favour to those we care about.

We as a family take the time to send Christmas cards to those we care about, but as we grow older those lists are growing and the price of stamps is rising. As a poor student, I have to struggle with my old opinions.

As I’ve said, past-me hated e-cards. He could rant about the bizarrely long loading time for oddly poor quality animations and the ‘click to feel appreciated’ culture for as long as you’d let him. To him, they felt like a cheapening of the experience of receiving a Christmas card, which is one both past and present me values highly.

{{quote I may be a romantic but I am a poor one, and with an ever expanding list of people I care about … sacrifices have to be made }}

He would say they cheapen it both literally, given that they remove the cost of a stamp, and they cheapen the experience: given that the only things I receive in the post are bank statements and the odd issue of The _Economist_, Christmas is an awesome time of year in which my post-box actually brings me joy rather than dread-for-my-bank-account and dread-for-the-world.

Yet knowing the things I know now, my counter would be that the cheapening of the experience is what makes it a practical tradition to continue. I may be a romantic but I’m a poor one, and with an ever expanding list of people I care about, most of whose addresses I couldn’t even guess at, sacrifices have to be made.

It’s weird that in a year I’ve gone from receiving an e-card and wondering where on the spectrum between ‘I care about you’ and ‘I’m vaguely glad you exist’ I place in the mind of the person who sent it to me to someone who’s having to send e-cards themselves, but when you’ve been in your overdraft for more than a couple of weeks, you’ve got to do what you got to do. As a friend once told me ‘the end of term is poor man’s time’ and ‘the poor man acts accordingly’. I suppose it’s odd to be eighteen and old fashioned, anyway.