Are Christmas cards outdated? By Charlotte Hitching, Bancroft's School

In the UK an average of 900 million Christmas cards are sent a year, with Britons sending an estimated 16 Christmas cards each. Christmas cards are undoubtedly fun to receive, contributing to the generally festive atmosphere. Another positive is their contribution to raising money for charities, in the UK an estimated £50m is raised by Christmas cards a year.

But are they worth it? It is estimated that instead of being recycled, 1 billion Christmas cards are put in the bin worldwide and 300,000 tonnes of card packaging is used during the Christmas season, which apparently, is enough to cover Big Ben in London. This will contribute negatively to our environment and we need to ask ourselves, how necessary is it? They are definitely nice to receive and have for the first five minutes, but after that I imagine many people just leave them lying around and they take up quite a lot of room. And if you receive one, there seems to be an unspoken rule that you have to send one in return, which uses up even more paper, and they can be quite tedious to write for something that is supposed to be enjoyable.

However, some supermarkets are taking steps to limit the environmental impact that Christmas cards have. Glitter features in many Christmas cards and John Lewis and Morrisons have both said that they will not be including glitter in any of their own-brand Christmas cards. Asda has also announced that it will be launching its first sustainable Christmas range. These supermarkets are among many who are making positive changes to their Christmas ranges this year.

Finally, as this year has been so different from previous years due to Covid-19, Christmas cards could be a good way of keeping in touch with people you may usually see over Christmas, but this year because of social distancing may not be able to do so. This year, Christmas cards could serve as a way of keeping communities together.

Overall, I think that Christmas cards are a defining part of Christmas and I think that they are not outdated and are appreciated by many in the community.