Time to mail out joy during stressful year
With humor or hope, holiday cards reflecting the times
ItwasonlyOctober, and an unseasonably hot and sunny day to boot, but Rovonne Staten’s front steps inGrapevine, Texas, brimmedwith Christmassy props. For her family’s holiday-card photo shoot, therewere poinsettias and wreaths, tinsel and tartan, an oversized ornament emblazonedwith the letter “S,” a plate of cookies for Santa— andasignreminding him to please stay outside.
“Santa can’t comein the house because ofCOVID,” joked Staten, 41, a project engineer, adding, “Iwant people to have a bright spot by looking at our picture and thinking, ‘Oh, that’s cute; that’s nice— you know, it looks like things might beOK.’ ”
At the end of a year marked by distance and disconnection, Staten will send holiday cards for the first time. And she is not alone. Paperless Post, an online card and invitation company, found in a recent survey that60% of users plan on sending holiday cards this year (compared with the38% of respondentswhosent them last year). Craft siteEtsy has had a 23% increase in searches for holiday cards in the last three months, compared with last year. Of the 2,000 Americans surveyed in September by Minted.com, a home-decor and stationery company, nearly three-quarters agreed that holiday cards have more sentimental value this year than in previous years.
Many cards of holidays past paired sun-dappled vacation collages ormagazine-worthy images of grinning children with pleasant messages about joy. But after a year markedmore byworry and stress than merriness, and with the pandemic and its economic toll raging on, some card senders, stationery companies and portrait photographers are taking another approach: outwith the honeyed sentiments, in withmasks and other depictions of the realities of this era.
“We should send holiday cards as away to connect with people,” said Elaine Swann, a lifestyle and etiquette expert. “And I believe thatwe can reference the pandemic in this medium, because everyone has been impacted in some way and it’s important to be upfront about it.”
For Staten, that meant purchasing redmasks (she hot-glued white fuzzy Santa trim to her husband’s) and enlisting a local photographer to capture her family of five from10 feet away. Even that style of portraiture is a cultural outcrop of the pandemic: The photographer, RachnaAgrawal, first photographed the Statens for the Front Steps Project, for which photographers around theworld captured socially distanced images of families as away to raise funds for local nonprofits and small businesses.
Shrutti Garg, aBrooklyn-based photographer whoalso participated in the Front Steps Project last spring, said she has several clients planning to repurpose those photos for holi
day cards.
“You can imagine they’re not the best photos,” Garg said. “But there’s a lot of families that are still going to use them, because it is what it is: This year, we were all in our pajamas at home.”
One Front Steps client, MaiNguyen-Huu, rehired Garg to shoot another set of outdoor family portraits for holiday cards. She and her husband have two daughters, about 4months old and almost 2.
“I think everyone needs to laugh,” saidNguyenHuu, 39, who lives in Brooklyn. “Butwe’ll probably be carefulwhowe send it out to— we probably won’t send it to peoplewho
have been affected in away where thiswould offend them.”
As aworkaround, Nguyen-Huu willmake a few different cards by mixing and matching photos and copy. In some images, Nyugen-Huu and her husbandwear masks. Some showan ice bucket filled with Champagne and Purell; others, a gift basket brimming with Clorox wipes and toilet paper. She’s toying with a few messages, including “Celebrating (at home) with the finest bottles of alcohol” and amore sincere one wishing recipients “a happy and safe holiday season.” She is also considering a “super-safe version” with
a traditional portrait and greeting.
MariamNaficy, Minted’s founder and chief executive, said the question of tone has addedweight for the independent artists whose card designs are sold on the site.
“With somany people passing away, we knew therewas a line thatwe could not cross,” she said. “It’s a very subtle thing. We didn’twant to be inappropriate becausewe don’t want people to take this lightly.”
Naficy has seen card designs andmessaging rise and fall with external events; for example, theword “peace” became popular after the 2016 presidential election. Now, she said, other trends are emerging.
“On the more serious side, ‘hope’ is a very popularword, as is ‘gratitude,’ ” saidNaficy. “Then on the funny side, there are a lot of peoplewhoareclearly interested inthehumorous take: Our familyhas been through a lot, I’m sure yours has too.”
Even seemingly timeless messages have distinctly 2020 vibes. Holiday messages on cards available onEtsy range from “Adios 2020” to references to hand-washing. One by designerTina Seamonster shows a dumpster fire emblazoned with “2020,” along with twowords above it: “We Survived.”
“We’re constantly seeing emerging inventory that reflect the zeitgeist, and this year’s holiday cards are no exception,” saidDayna IsomJohnson, Etsy’s trend expert.
All it took for Kristen Hope’s holiday card to materializewas a friend’s message onTwitter depicting the enormous disposable face mask adorning the facade of the Science Museum ofVirginia. The museumis about 100 miles south ofHope’s homein Arlington, Virginia.
“I thought, ‘Oh, that would make a great Christmas card,’ especially becausewe didn’t really domuchin terms of family vacations this year,” said Hope, 48, a stay-at-home mother of a 14-year-old and 12-year-old twins. “We were bored one Saturday, sowe grabbed our selfie stick, jumped in the car, took a photo, got back in the car and drovehome.”
Aformer research librarianwho diligently keeps her address list up-to-date, Hope ordered cards from Minted (“HappyHolidays FromOur QuaranteamTo Yours”) and plans to send them around Thanksgiving Her only regret? Leaving the backside blank.
“I should have put a little asterisk that said:‘We didn’t go inside. We used a selfie stick. We had our masks with us,’ ” she said.