The holidays are over, officially. So that means it’s time to put away all the Christmas decorations, toss the uneaten and stale cookies and take down the taped up holiday cards.
Which brings me to my current dilemma: What am I supposed to do with all these photo Christmas cards?
You know what I’m talking about – the happy family holiday Christmas greetings we all get showing your friends with their kids, or just your friends’ kids, or your newlywed friends with their new dog.
There was once a time when I got one or two of the photo cards over the holidays, with the rest being your standard paper greeting. This year, there were a whopping – wait, lemme go count -- 13. And that’s not counting the ones that are probably lost in the mail since I’m between addresses this year.
It seems almost every one of my friends is now doing the family-photo-card for Christmas, which I don’t have a problem with, really. I love kids, so it’s fun to see how my friends’ children change from year to year – especially the children who live far away so I don’t get to see very often.
My problem is just that once the holidays are over, I don’t know what to do with the photos.
I feel guilty throwing them in the garbage, like I would any other Christmas greeting. I can’t just pitch my friends’ adorable offspring into a bag to be hauled off with the stinky egg nog carton.
For a while, I was keeping some friends’ cards in an album, which seemed to work nicely.
But with 13 to keep up with, at this rate, I’m going to have a library of albums before I ever buy a house to store them in. And that seems, at best, over-accommodating, and at worst, freaky and my ticket to Loserville.
So I turn this over to You. You with kids. Or You With Friends With Kids who has figured out how to handle this post-holiday situation.
Is it time for me to start pitching my friends’ family in the garbage? Or is there another solution I don’t know about?
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10 comments:
I think the "pc" thing to do is hang on to them until the next Xmas comes then keep the update and chuck the old one. Happy New Year Vikki!
I sent you one and I am giving you permission to chuck it. You won't hurt my feelings!
Scan them into your computer. This way you have a digital copy to reference whenever you want. This should alleviate any guilt you have about throwing away the original.
Hello from MKE.
does this mean you have thrown out my christmas card without guilt because its not a photo???
( :
happy new year stranger
where possible, snip off the borders that contain the holiday greeting and then treat them as you would any snapshot you might get.
I place the cards/photos into plastic sleeves within a photo album.
I'm glad to have them for posterity!
I keep mine in a pretty box along with other cards that are special. When the box gets full (it hasn't yet), I plan on looking through them and weeding a few out. It's fun to look through them all once a year to see how my friends and their family have changed.
I am in the same position as you, and my feeling is that I don't keep things out of guilt anymore. Out to the trash they go!
I don't think you should feel any guilt chucking those pictures out. However, if you intend to thoughtfully look through your albums of other people's children in the years to come with a fond memory of the moment you received the card...by all means, keep them around. ;-)
I know this comment is a little late, but last year my Grandma received a Christmas card from her sister that had the photo card my Grandma had sent about 45 years before tucked inside. Since last year, I have been trying to keep those photo cards of those that I would like to surprise 40 some years down the road.
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