Doing the write thing this Christmas season

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

We’re a generation away from losing the ability to write. Not writing as in putting words together to form a half-coherent sentence, but writing as in taking out a pen and putting words down in sequence on a piece of paper.

The dearth of Christmas cards brought home the point – or maybe that’s just my Grinch-like approach to aspects of the festive season that have finally come home to roost.

There are still cards in the postman’s sack, but they’re mainly from older people – aunts and uncles who do what they always do and go out to buy a pack of cards (or purchase them in aid of a deserving charity), then sit down at the table, get out the address book and think of something slightly different to say in everyone of them.

That takes a lot more effort than a group text.

And now that they are fewer than they used to be, when you receive the card, you do read it and you acknowledge that someone thought enough of you to go through all of that – to give you a few minutes of their time to wish you well at this time of year, to find if you’ve moved house, and to go to the post office to drop your card with the others for delivery.

A group text, on the other hand, might be lashed off between pints in a pub at the Christmas party and while the thought clearly counts, you cannot guarantee the sender was really thinking at all.

The Americans have calculated that the level of Christmas cards dropped by one-third between 1997 and 2004. And given the advance of the iPhone since then, we can safely cut that in half again.

The same in undoubtedly true here – and the irony is that every survey you ever read tells you that more people than ever would love to get cards at Christmas.

The decline in writing correspondence doesn’t begin and end with Christmas, of course – remember the holiday postcard that always ended up stuck to the notice board or the fridge?

Whether it was two carrot-topped kids with their donkey and turf baskets from John Hinde or a beach scene from Torremolinos or Mickey Mouse from Orlando, it gave you a glimpse of someone else’s good time.

There was thought put into the message here too, with the kids even having to offer a word on their break; you might be sick with envy at your relatives’ great trip, but you also knew that they had taken time out of their holiday to think of you.

Go back through time to see the historical as well as sentimental value of a handwritten letter.

Imagine if soldiers at the front in World War 1 had the facility to send a text to their mothers instead of a letter.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.