Producing holiday cards can be stressful. Themes, costumes, set designs. So many choices. But this year, my wife and I ditched them all as the postal deadline got closer.Instead, we used pre-existing photos and Shutterfly! Done!
Using web services like Shutterfly, American Greetings, or Jib Jab to produce photo cards, e-cards, and animated movies can certainly cut down on stress and production time. And animated greetings like the one I made using Jib Jab took 15 minutes to produce, but I'll enjoy it for the rest of my life.
Now on the surface, it might seem I've identified another arena where digital gives "hand-cranked" technology a beat down. But let's be clear. My wife and I didn't write holiday cards. We produced and sent them, but didn't write unless, "Happy holidays from the Tomizawas" in red blazoned text counts as writing.
This is not writing, it's efficiency. Technology for the masses makes life a little easier and a little less stressful. Still, for every leap forward we take with technology, we tend to lose a step somewhere else. For instance, I don't have any numbers to make this point, but I'm guessing we were probably a more literate nation (read and wrote more) before television, not to mention the Internet and YouTube. And in the days before GPS, I'll bet more people could find their way out of the wilds by pinpointing their position using the sun or stars. Nowadays, people can barely find their way out of the mall parking lot, GPS or not.
Technology has great power in connecting people, but only virtually. And in a virtual world, everyone keeps their hands to themselves. You can't hug someone online, although apparently there's a service for that too. Yes, I love writing letters and cards by hand. There are only a handful of people like me left.
Handwritten notes, letters, and greeting cards provide an intimacy that electronic messages cannot. They provide a direct connection between reader and writer through paper that is literally touched by both, through the ink that seemingly carries the smell and caress of the writer's hands, and through thoughtful, inspiring, and loving words which flow from one person to the other from the moment the envelope is opened. They are deeply personal and everlasting.
Can an email, ecard, photocard, or animated Flash movie top that?
I guess the short answer is, it depends on who's writing. These days if you walk into a greeting card store, you'll find thousands of cards that do the talking for you. Just sign your name to it. You know how hard it is to find a blank greeting card these days? It's as if we are being told, "You have no words of value to share with your daughter on the eve of her wedding, so let this card do the talking with its catchy limerick from Shoebox Greetings."
But look at me, the hypocrite. While my holiday photo card allowed me space on the back to embrace individual friends and family with handwritten words filled with sentiment, grandeur, and herald angels, albeit over the Shutterfly invoice order number and date stamp, we mostly went with "Happy holidays from the Tomizawas" and slapped a postage stamp to it.
Now I'm going to have to atone for my sin. Where did I leave the pen and paper? But first, let me take one more look at our holiday video!
