Mail Delays and Holiday Cards
My washi-tape tree of 2018. Read more about it in Do You Keep or Toss Holiday Cards?
The USPS announced in September that mail would be slower in the last few months of 2021. This cost-saving measure affects 40% of first-class mail - not in accuracy, just in speed. This shift might have you wondering if you should bother with the annual holiday cards.
Oh, you were sending them before because it was fast?
Snail mail is not free or quick. You have options if that’s what you want: send a text, or hop in your time machine to pre-1950 America, when mail was delivered more than once a day (crank it back to Victorian-era London if you’d like deliveries 12 times a day). And you know your texts aren’t actually free, unless your mom still pays your phone bill.
Snail mail lingers.
Yes, it lingers in warehouses and on trucks. It also lingers on bulletin boards, tucked into scrapbooks, occupying the corner of a mirror frame. It lingers in your hands and your recipient’s hands, and you’re touching the same thing, minutes or miles apart, connected through something that lasts.
If you want quick, and you want cheap, a group text with merry wishes is the way to go. No judgment here.
If you have time and the other resources you need to get out annual snail mail greetings, know how greatly they’ll be appreciated on the receiving end.
Eventually.
