People Used to Write Letters
I wrote letters to authors, to businesses, to Ripley’s Believe It or Not, to my mother, to my future self. Then work got busy and the internet made the whole habit obsolete.Share on X
When I was growing up, writing letters was just something people did. Handwritten or typed, letters were how you reached anyone who was not in the room. And I wrote a lot of them.
I wrote to authors, long before I was one myself. I wrote to businesses. I wrote letters to Ripley’s Believe It or Not, the old series about things you cannot believe are true, which practically ran on reader mail. I wrote to my teachers and to my mother. I wrote a few to my father, though not many, because his temper made it a risky thing to do. And strangest of all, I wrote letters to myself, to be read in the future, little time capsules from one version of me to another.
National Letter Writing Day falls on December 7, and it celebrates exactly this habit. I am glad someone still marks it, even though I have to be honest about what happened to my own letter writing.
What Killed Letters, and What Survived
Two things ended my letter writing, and neither was dramatic. First, work got busy, the way it does, and the time I once spent on letters went to other things. Then the internet arrived, and email made the handwritten letter more or less obsolete. Why spend a stamp and three days when you could send the same words in three seconds?
So I stopped writing letters. But here is the part that matters. I did not stop writing to people. I kept writing emails, and I still do, sending notes to friends now and then just to stay in contact. The container changed. The impulse did not. I think that is the honest way to understand National Letter Writing Day in the present. The point was never the paper. The point was taking the time to reach out to a specific person with words meant only for them, and you can do that just as well in an email as on stationery.
I will tell you something funny about it, though. When I email old friends to stay in touch, they usually do not write back. They get busy, or distracted, or whatever it is. That has not stopped me. Reaching out is worth doing even when the reply does not come, because the writing is partly for you, not just for them.
Where I Part Ways: Greeting Cards
A greeting card is a piece of printed cardboard someone else wrote, sold to you for eight dollars. Writing your own three sentences means more than buying the fanciest card on the rack.Share on X
Here is where I lose some of you. I have never believed in greeting cards.
A greeting card has always struck me as a slightly silly way to spend money. You walk up to a rack, pick a piece of printed cardboard that somebody else wrote, and hand over seven, eight, ten dollars for it. You are mostly funding card companies for the privilege of signing your name under a stranger’s sentiment. I have noticed, too, that the card rack is mostly populated by women. Sending cards seems to skew female, and that is fine, it is just not me. I have sent cards on occasion, and I used to send more, but it has drifted further and further down my list of things that matter.
None of that is a knock on staying in touch. It is the opposite. If you actually want to reach someone, write them three real sentences in your own words. That beats the most expensive card on the rack, because the card says someone else’s thing and your three sentences say yours. The whole value of a letter, or an email, or a note, is that it came from you. A card mostly proves you stood in a store.
The Surprising Craft Hidden in Cards
I will give greeting cards this. Writing a good one is much harder than it looks, and there is a real profession buried in it.
There is a ghostwriting and copywriting business in greeting cards. I do not work in it myself, but I have known of people who do, and from what I understand it is a tough field to break into. It is narrow and largely sewn up by the people already in it. You would think a greeting card would be easy to write, a few lines, how hard can it be? But that is exactly the trap. Writing something short, unique, catchy, and emotionally right in a handful of words is genuinely difficult. It is much closer to copywriting than to ordinary prose. Every word has to land, there is no room to recover from a weak one, and it has to feel fresh in a category where almost everything has been said.
So even as someone who does not buy cards, I respect the craft of writing them. Saying something real in very few words is one of the hardest things a writer can do, whether it ends up on a card, in an ad, or in the opening line of a book.
How to Spend National Letter Writing Day
Write to someone. That is the assignment, and you get to choose the form. If you love handwritten letters, write one, the paper and the stamp and the wait are part of the charm for a lot of people, and I am not going to talk you out of it. If you are like me and letters migrated to email years ago, then send a real email, the kind with actual thought in it, not a one-line reply.
Pick a specific person and write words meant only for them. An old friend you have lost track of. A teacher who mattered. A family member you keep meaning to reach. Do not worry about whether they write back. Mine usually do not, and I send the message anyway, because the reaching out is the point.
And if you want a small challenge, try writing a letter to your future self, the way I used to. Seal it, date it, and open it in a year. You will be surprised who you were when you read it. The form of the letter has changed over my lifetime, from paper to screen, but the heart of it never did. December 7 is a good day to send a few real words to someone who will be glad you thought of them, however you choose to send them.