We seem to get busier and busier every year. And each year, we often have to make trade-offs. Do we spend time putting together an elaborate holiday party, sign the kids up for another activity, take a Spa day, or get those holiday cards mailed out? And sometimes, the holiday cards fall off our to-do list as we swear off the hassle of doing them this year.

But when we make a short term decision to spare ourselves the inconvenience, we don’t realize the full extent of the choice we are making. There are still some very valid reasons why you should send out a holiday card this year (and every year, in fact), and they have nothing to do with “It’s what everyone else is doing”, “I want to look good in front of my friends in family”, or “I want to show the world how happy and successful we are this year”. All those shallow reasons have no bearing on the real value of holiday cards! Read on to find out why…

1. People still love receiving actual mail

Remember the feeling you get when you open your mailbox and pull out an actual letter among the usual bunch of promotional flyers and catalogs. It feels pretty damn great. It’s exciting and joyous and you can’t wait to open it and see what’s inside. That is exactly how people feel receiving YOUR holiday card! We don’t realize how happy this stuff makes us because we tend to take it for granted. We don’t experience the joy that grandma feels when she sees her grandchildren on a holiday card. Instead we think about the hassle and work that needs to be put into the process. But it’s still very much worth it. And as much as I love digital greetings, it will never be the same as physically opening that envelope and pulling out a tangible printed card.

2. It becomes part of your family legacy

Have you ever gone through the stack of your family’s holiday cards over the years? If your family is new and you don’t have that history yet, that’s ok. My own family is still on the younger side. But I’ve sat down with clients who pulled out a stack of cards from the past 15 years and let me tell you, it brings a wealth of emotions and gratitude to see them. Flipping through those cards you get this incredible sense of what their family is like, how they’ve grown over the years, and all the changes that have taken place. It’s priceless and irreplaceable. And you can’t really go back in time and have a re-do at building up this incredible collection of your family’s holiday cards. So take the time NOW to start, to continue, or to simply make it a priority going forward, because having these cards as part of your family legacy is going to be a huge thing later in life.

3. It forces you to document each year

We all take tons of pictures of our children. But what about the whole family? What about a quality portrait where everyone actually likes how they look? When you’re deciding what ONE or TWO photos to put on your holiday card, you really have to think about what that image represents. And more often than not, that forces us to have the desire to properly document our family. The truth is, once our babies get older, we get a lot lazier about prioritizing photography. Years go by, and we end up with teenagers going off to college and no good family photos for all those years in-between. Holiday cards wake parents up and prompt them to go out and hire a photographer so that they have something decent for their card (or at the very least, to hand their phone to someone else to capture a decent photo). And you know what, that’s actually a really great thing, because otherwise we would all end up with no good photographs of our family to look back on!

I think it’s important to keep the things above in mind when you’re considering whether a holiday card is worth all the trouble this year. In short, YES, it’s worth the work. It’s worth prioritizing and getting out, but not for reasons most people think.

In the end, it’s not about other people or looking good in front of your friends and family, but it’s about YOU. It’s about the fact that your family is important. Your children deserve to have beautiful family photographs and a legacy of images they can look back on to see how they’ve grown over the years. And you should do it for them. But also make it easier for yourself! Use online ordering. Hire a photographer (self-serving, I know, but it doesn’t have to be me). Get the family together for that great family portrait that will actually get printed on a card with the year and keep it safe so that you still have it twenty or thirty years from now. It doesn’t have a be a huge deal or a huge suck of your time! But most of all, you and your family are worth the effort!