Who can afford to send Christmas cards any more?

At this time of year I’d usually be writing dozens of Christmas cards, with a Snowball to hand, heavy on the Advocaat. Many would be to people with whom I have no contact at any other time of year. It can be quietly meditative to write a note with an actual fountain pen to an old school friend or neighbour.

But this time, in an abrupt break with tradition, I’ve bought just a couple of packets of cards. My list has been strimmed to include family, godchildren, a few very old people who’d miss receiving something in the post – and those to whom I can hand-deliver. The tradition of sending Christmas cards is under threat, not from e-cards or from Gen Z-ers who wouldn’t recognise an envelope if it gave them a paper cut – but from the price of a stamp.

In my mind, a stamp is still about 27p. I physically staggered at the Post Office counter on being told the cost of a book of 50 second-class stamps (£42.50). Even if I were to get all my cards written in a timely fashion, I’d be spending almost £150 on postage alone. For late cards, a book of 50 first-class stamps will set you back £82.50.

It’s particularly ironic given that the very first Christmas card was commissioned and sent in 1843 by Henry Cole, founding director of the V&A, who’d been instrumental in setting up the Uniform Penny Post, which encouraged the sending of seasonal greetings.

‘We’re very concerned about the cost,’ says Amanda Fergusson, CEO of the Greetings Card Association, who’s on a train to London to lobby MPs about this very issue when I call her. ‘Christmas cards decorate our homes. Sending and receiving cards means a huge amount to people – it’s a tangible connection with loved ones.’ Fergusson wants MPs to have oversight of the pricing of first-class stamps – which went up by 30p to £1.65 each in October – and scrutiny of the Ofcom and Royal Mail proposals to water down the Universal Service Obligation. According to Ofcom, 42 per cent of the population now use Royal Mail only to send greetings cards.

Her data also shows that people are sending fewer cards but spending more on individual Christmas cards for close friends and family – £177.5 million last year. This is a worry for the many charities who rely on sales of boxes of Christmas cards for a significant chunk of their income.

Christine Ansell, CEO of fundraising charity Cards for Good Causes, says postage costs will have a ‘direct impact’ on the revenue of more than 70 charities supported by her organisation, including Cancer Research UK and the Army Benevolent Fund. ‘Customers are sharing with us that they’re not sending as many cards as they normally do. There’s a lot of mistrust of the second-class service as well; Royal Mail say they’re delivering every other day, but from a recipient’s point of view, that’s not happening.’

Cards for Good Causes has raised £22.5 million for charities over the past ten years. Ansell’s fears are not just for its revenue, but the ‘onward impact’ on the recipients of Christmas cards, many of whom are elderly and socially isolated.

‘We’re definitely getting fewer,’ says my friend Belinda, who’s in her seventies and designs her own card each year. Belinda is one of those great stalwarts of village life, but even she is trying to cut her Christmas card list down from 400 to 100. She’ll share her card design on Facebook, but it’s hardly the same. E-cards, often accompanied by their virtue-signalling message that ‘we’re giving the money to charity this year’, have never captured the imagination. They feel rather late 1990s.

Some think we should bin the tradition of sending cards altogether – it is a fairly recent one, after all, brought in by the Victorians along with crackers and Christmas trees. Seventy years ago, Sir John Betjeman skewered the absurdity of sending out ‘twenty yards/ Laid end to end, of Christmas cards/ To people that I scarcely know’ in his poem ‘Advent 1955’. A straw poll of friends reveals most aren’t bothering with cards this year, apart from to elderly relatives and the hand-delivered (teachers, neighbours, binmen).

Much of the fun of opening a Christmas card used to be finding one of those frightfully smug ‘round robin’ letters inside (‘My fifth novel was well-reviewed, Goneril has joined her sister Clytemnestra at Oxford, a “K” for Tristan in the King’s Birthday Honours List’, etc). But social media has also removed the need for these annual circulars when those so inclined can drip-feed their boasting throughout the year.

Of the people I speak to, just one respondent tells me she will be sending close to her usual quota, but only because the envelope will also include a proper ‘stiffy’ invitation to her big birthday party next summer – to save on postage.