Holiday cards making a comeback

It was only October, and an unseasonably hot and sunny afternoon to boot, but Rovonne Staten's front steps in Grapevine, Texas, brimmed with Christmassy props. There were poinsettias and wreaths, tinsel and tartan, an oversized ornament emblazoned with the letter "S" and a plate of cookies for Santa.

It was all for her family's holiday-card photo shoot,

"I want 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 be OK.' " said Staten, 41, a project engineer.

At the end of a year marked by distance and disconnection, Staten is sending holiday cards for the first time. And she is not alone. Paperless Post, an online card and invitation company, found in a recent survey that 60% of users plan on sending holiday cards this year (compared with the 38% of respondents who sent them last year).

Other data confirm the trend. Craft site Etsy has had a 23% increase in searches for holiday cards in the past 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.

The messages are different, too.

Many cards of holidays past paired sun-dappled vacation collages or magazine-worthy images of grinning children with pleasant messages about joy. But after a year marked more by worry 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: out with the honeyed sentiments, in with masks and other depictions of the realities of this era.

For Staten, that meant purchasing red masks (she hot-glued white fuzzy Santa trim to her husband's) and enlisting a photographer to capture her family of five from 10 feet away.

Mai Nguyen-Huu hired a photo­grapher to shoot a set of outdoor family portraits for holiday cards. She and her husband have two daughters, about 4 months old and almost 2. In some images, she and her husband wear masks. Some show an ice bucket filled with Champagne and Purell; others, a gift basket brimming with Clorox wipes and toilet paper.

"I think everyone needs to laugh," said Nguyen-Huu, 39, who works in the fashion industry and lives in New York City. "But we'll probably be careful who we send it out to — we probably won't send it to people who have been affected in a way where this would offend them."

Mariam Naficy, Minted's founder and chief executive, said the question of tone has added weight for the independent artists whose card designs are sold on the site.

"With so many people passing away, we knew there was a line that we could not cross," she said. "It's a very subtle thing. We didn't want to be inappropriate because we don't want people to take this lightly."

"I think if you're making light of the pandemic, you risk insulting those who have families and loved ones who've passed away," Post said. "But if you're wearing masks or showing social distancing as a sincere support for those acts, I'm all behind you 100 percent, and I think etiquette would be behind you, too."

Naficy said card designs and messaging are changing to reflect the times.

"On the more serious side, 'hope' is a very popular word, as is 'gratitude,' " said Naficy. "Then on the funny side, there are a lot of people who are clearly interested in the humorous take: Our family has been through a lot, I'm sure yours has, too."

Holiday messages on cards available on Etsy range from "Adios 2020" to references to hand-washing. One by designer Tina Seamonster shows a dumpster fire emblazoned with "2020," along with two words above it: "We Survived."

"We're constantly seeing emerging inventory that reflect the zeitgeist, and this year's holiday cards are no exception," said Dayna Isom Johnson, Etsy's trend expert.

"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,' " said the mother of two who lives in Arlington, Va.

Elise Miller has always been a holiday-card devotee. She has traditionally tapped a photographer friend to shoot bright, elegantly composed family portraits. By contrast, this year's card is a screenshot.

"We had been Zooming with our family so much," said Miller, 52, who works at the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "And one day, I was looking at the screen and I thought, 'You know what, we should just take a picture because this would be a great holiday card.' "

Four of five family members, including the Millers' 16-year-old twins, beamed in from separate rooms of their home in Boulder. Their 20-year-old daughter, a junior at college, joined from her apartment.