I Don't Care About Snookums!

It's that time of year. They've started flooding my mailbox. I can't stop them. It's the arrival of all those Christmas cards from my friends all over the world. Isn't daily contact on Facebook enough for these people?

The ones that especially annoy me are the cards that contain two to five page letters on every activity the family conducted during the year. Do I really care that Snookums the cat was spayed in March? And that the basement was flooded in October?

You are probably calling me Scrooge by now. Don't get me wrong — I do enjoy receiving cards. It's the accompanying long letters that bother me.

Editor Steve recently wrote a great article about holiday cards and I agree that when I do send them, I would like them to benefit a cause. Having good associated with anything we do helps us rationalize taking the action in the first place. Doing good just got a whole lot easier.

Everyclick is a great new e-card service whose goal is to get people to substitute paper Christmas cards with an online greeting. I have always been a fan of e-cards: They save time (you can send ON the day that you receive a card from someone so it looks like they were on your list, too), they save on waste (paper holiday cards generate 20,000 tons of waste per year) and these particular cards let you give to charity rather than shopping for unwanted gifts. In fact, you can even let the recipient decide where he or she wants to give.

While currently only supporting charities in the U.K., Everclick would be smart to expand to cover the United States and other global charities. I love the idea of e-cards that help solve a problem! Now, if only the people who send me the tomes of their life history would use these fantastic cards, my holiday season would glow a whole lot brighter!