The fact is, many of our closest friends have little or no physical presence in our lives. We love them via the phone, or by email, or (I admit it) on facebook. For many of these people--at least half of the address book on my phone--we have no street address. These aren't second-tier friends, not necessarily anyway--they are internet correspondents. This is its own particular, and honored, category.
And so next year, we're doing a web page and will email you a link. It won't just be a photo--we'll fancy it up, maybe stick a song on there, or a Flash animation (if Flash is still alive in late 2011, and Owen still knows how to code it), or bit of comic writing, or what have you. The fact is, the virtual world is more versatile and potentially entertaining for this sort of thing. Our crowning achievement in the paper arena was probably the board game we designed and sent out years ago--that was a corker. But last year's card (admittedly, it was lame: a broken-image gif on the front and a "404: card not found" error on the back), nobody even bothered to tell us they received. It was just another piece of junk mail.
The thing is, a holiday card is something you're only supposed to look at for about a minute. Then you throw it away. This is practically the definition of internet content. It isn't that a fine old tradition is dead: it's that the perfect technology for holiday greetings has finally arrived. We're gonna do it, but we're gonna do it for free. To our beloved physical-world friends, we thank you for your cards and letters (espcially Sung's and Dawn's, with all the adorable dog pix, and Bev, with the crazy-ass family photo and two-page newsy snark manifesto). But we're going virtual in 2011. And the USPS, sad to say, can suck it.
