I’m either lazy, thrifty, or green.

Since Andy and I got married in 1999, I have mailed a year-at-a-glance letter each Christmas rather than a greeting card. My reason was simple: I give what I like to receive.

There are people who display Christmas cards around their home during the month of December. I’m not one of those people. While I appreciate that someone cares enough to send our family a Christmas card, they go right into the trash. I can hear some of you gasp as you read that, thinking I’m the Grinch. Maybe it’s bad that I think of cards as clutter, but it is what it is.

I do enjoy getting year-at-a-glance letters, though. This is especially nice when we receive them from people who don’t update regularly on Facebook, or people who [unbelievably] aren’t on Facebook. I like to be kept in the loop, you know.

I also like getting photo cards in the mail. I do keep those in an album, forever and ever. But anyway. Back to the point.

Since 1999 I’ve mailed a year-at-a-glance letter each Christmas. This letter is accompanied by a photo of my charming family, or maybe just my kids if a decent family photo wasn’t available. Also, because I’m so clever, I always printed a copy of the letter for myself. I’ve saved these letters in a binder, so that we have a book of memories for each year of our marriage. I’m thinking this will be a treasured piece of history when we’re 90, and our kids and their kids will probably love it, too. This idea came to me in 2000, which means I don’t have a copy of our 1999 letter. In case you  haven’t already figured this out, I’m slightly OCD and have actually lost sleep over not having EVERY year represented in my little book. I’m really trying to get over it. Really.

But this is 2011, folks. Thanks to this little networking tool with a book of faces (The Facebook, if you will), not only do I have a year-at-a-glance summary of my friends’ lives, sometimes I even know what they eat for dinner, how many centimeters they’re dilated, or if they’ve been barfing for the past three days. I’ve likely also seen 100+ photos of them with their charming families, or classy self-portraits they’ve taken in their bathrooms. And because I’ve seen these updates and photos all year, I assume my family/friends have all seen the same in regards to me and my family, unless they’ve hidden me in their feed, and then really, they don’t care if they get a letter/photo from me or not. So, I feel that a year-at-a-glance letter with a photo is, well, REDUNDANT. I’m still going to write a letter and stick a copy in my binder, but I decided to only mail it to my peeps who aren’t on The Facebook. This will save time, money, and the planet, which means I’m either lazy, thrifty, or green.