Getting Carded

An economist mulls over burning the Christmas card list. Tim Harford:

Christmas cards are given and received in a parody of a market - one that involves interpersonal exchange but no prices. That matters because it means our cards are sent out into an informational void. Is it appropriate to send a card to one’s teacher? To one’s boss? To close colleagues? Distant ones? We can look at the cards we receive and try to extrapolate, but this only goes so far. A student does not know what cards a teacher receives because she is not a teacher; but she knows she doesn’t want to be the only student who didn’t bother.

We receive too little feedback and it arrives too late. In a conversation with a friend we quickly and continuously read each other’s moods - but was last year’s card from your former neighbours a genuine attempt to keep in touch, or a dutiful reciprocation of your card from the year before? (Always assuming you have your list from two years ago to check.) Or did it simply reflect the fact that they had sent you cards for years and were concerned that breaking off the correspondence would send an unwelcome message, even though the correspondence itself sends no message at all? One thing is certain: they will not send you a clarifying cover note.
Mutual suffering is not enough to end the process. Two families may end up locked together in a grim ritual, each sending a card because they know the other will send one, each knowing that this is the only reason the cards are sent. Both would prefer to stop, but neither is going to be the first to do so. “Exchange” is not the right word here. “Vendetta” is more accurate.

The whole result is so clumsy that a Nobel laureate in economics, Thomas Schelling, once described these symptoms in detail before advocating bankruptcy proceedings in which all Christmas card lists should be burned.

Why does the “market” for Christmas cards work so badly? Simply because there is no reason that it should work well.

In my life, I've found the politics of holiday card/gift-giving (what I refer to as "holitics") really compounds the stress and discomfort I experience at this time of year. I've always found Christmas to be a time when one's bumbling awkwardness is brought into sharp relief. There is much to recommend the Seinfeldian idea of "Festivus." Or, indeed, in the Seussian idea of the Grinch.
Uh oh. I think I hear Jacob Marley's ghost at the door....Oh, whew! It's only Bob Marley's ghost. Bah, mon!