Moribund

Eleven years ago, I posted a lament for the dying custom of sending Christmas cards.  I waxed sentimental over my childhood, recalling how, as a kid, I had opened with excitement the huge bundle of cards that arrived each day. And how, fascinated especially by cards from non-relatives, I would try to figure out who these many senders might be, and what part they played in my folks' lives.

But the custom was already dying by 2008.  I didn't note in my blog how many I was sending that year, but I had been gradually whittling the number down over the previous couple of decades.  Not in a spirit of retaliation, but simply as a recognition that customs change, and that it might be embarrassing to receive my card if you hadn't planned to send one to me.  But I soldiered on:

Maybe in 2008, with email and Facebook so readily available, no one really does care if I send them a card or not. But I send them for myself, at least in part. Christmas just doesn't feel like Christmas until I carry my stack of envelopes down to the corner and drop them in the mailbox.

By last year, I noted that my "stack of envelopes" was down to about twenty, and that, as of today's date one year ago, I had received only seven.  By the time the season was over, late stragglers raised that figure to thirteen.

This year, I sent out 21 cards, about the same as last year.  As of today, with two more mail delivery days before Christmas, I have received three -- one of them from my sister, and one of them an e-card, rather than a tangible card delivered by mail.

I'm sure I'll get a few more by the time I return from Idaho, but the trend is obvious.

"Moribund," i.e., not dead but close to it.  Is it pathetic to continue with a moribund custom?  Where is the dividing line between "pathetic" and "delightfully antiquarian"?

And at what point do we pull the sheet over the moribund patient and snap our fingers to summon the eagerly awaiting mortician?

Merry Digital Christmas!