28th September 2026
Will the Christmas Card Die This Year?
Rising postage, fuel and household costs are putting another old Christmas tradition under pressure
Will this be the year when the Christmas card finally starts to disappear?.
Perhaps not completely. But there are signs that one of Britain's longest-standing Christmas traditions is being squeezed from several directions at once.
I have noticed it myself. Over the past couple of years I have cut back substantially on the number of Christmas cards I send. Some younger relatives no longer send cards at all.
That may simply be one family's experience, but it raises an interesting question. How many Christmas traditions survive when the cost of maintaining them keeps rising and there are now so many alternatives?
The price of sending a card certainly doesn't help.
Royal Mail currently charges 91p for a second-class standard letter and £1.80 for first class. A Christmas card normally qualifies as a standard letter if it meets the size and weight requirements.
Nine or ten cards doesn't sound too bad.
But somebody sending 40 cards faces £36 in second-class postage before paying for the cards themselves. Fifty cards means £45. First class would cost £90 for 50 cards.
And then there is the card itself.
What was once a relatively inexpensive way of remembering friends and relatives has become another small annual expense that competes with everything else in the household budget.
The problem is that postage is only one part of the story.
Diesel prices affect the cost of transporting almost everything that reaches the shops. Heating oil matters particularly to households in rural Scotland. Electricity and other household bills have risen. Food remains a significant part of family budgets. Even getting to the shops has become more expensive.
None of these costs is directly connected with Christmas cards, of course.
But they all compete for the same household pound.
And Christmas is a month when that competition becomes particularly obvious.
There are presents to buy, food for Christmas dinner, perhaps travel to see family, heating for a house that may be occupied more than usual and all the other expenses associated with the festive period.
Something has to give.
For some families it may be the number of presents. For others it might be eating out, travelling or entertaining.
And perhaps for an increasing number, it will be the Christmas card.
The alternatives have also changed dramatically.
A Christmas message can now arrive instantly by text, WhatsApp, email, Facebook or another social-media platform. A photograph of the family can be sent around the world without a stamp.
For grandparents and older relatives, the physical card may still have something that a phone message cannot quite replace. It can sit on the mantelpiece for several weeks and become part of the decoration of Christmas.
But younger generations have grown up with digital communication. For them, sending dozens of physical cards may simply seem unnecessary.
There is another possibility too.
Instead of buying a present for every child, grandchild, niece, nephew and friend, people may increasingly give money.
A £20 cash gift or bank transfer is, after all, £20 that the recipient can spend on something they actually want.
The giver doesn't have to guess the right size, colour or model. There is no postage and no unwanted present sitting in a cupboard.
That may sound rather less personal than choosing a present, but it could also be a practical response to increasingly expensive Christmases.
The same applies to cards.
A personal message sent electronically costs virtually nothing and can be much more than a simple “Merry Christmas”. It can include photographs, family news and even a video message.
The technology has changed.
The economics have changed.
And the habits may be changing with them.
That does not mean Christmas cards are about to disappear. There will always be people who enjoy choosing them, writing them and receiving them. Some traditions survive precisely because people value them, rather than because they are the cheapest option.
But traditions can change gradually.
If somebody sends 50 cards one year, 35 the next, 20 after that and eventually only a handful to their closest friends and relatives, there may never be a particular moment when the Christmas card “dies”.
It simply becomes less important.
There is also an interesting generational effect. If older people reduce their card lists while younger people never develop the habit in the first place, the number of cards sent could decline considerably without any formal decision by anyone to abandon the tradition.
Perhaps that is what we are beginning to see.
The Christmas card has survived wars, recessions, changing family structures and the arrival of television, email and mobile phones.
But this time it faces something different.
It isn't just new technology.
It is technology combined with rising costs.
When a stamp costs 91p, fuel costs more, heating costs more and the Christmas shopping bill is already stretching the household budget, the question becomes rather simple.
Do I really need to send 40 cards?
For some people, the answer will remain yes.
For others, it may increasingly be: “I'll send you a message instead.”
And perhaps that is how old traditions disappear.
Not with a dramatic announcement, but one household at a time.