I received a thank you card from someone today. I’ve never really been sure what you do in those situations. The whole process of thanking could go on ad nauseam with one thanking the other for the thank you until the two end up hating each other for so much appreciation.
While it is an exercise in redundancy you do want to know—even if just a little—that the other indeed received your thank you. You apply all of your wit to a 2 inch by 3 inch card only to never really know if the other received the small token of appreciation, which raises the other question: why so damn small? If you are really thankful to someone for something, shouldn’t you write a long treatise of your appreciation? Instead, you are restricted to the ultra-small cousin of condolence, the “Thank You.” The post office doesn’t care; they charge you the same first class for the small token of appreciation as they do for the gargantuan birthday cards.
Abolition is my stance. You give me something, and I look you in the eye and say “thanks”—I mean it, you know it, and we’re done. Someone may say, “oh, but its tradition.” Indeed, it is traditional for a husband and wife to spend the first months of awkward cohabitation silently writing out their thank you’s from dusk til dawn. No wonder the divorce rate is so high. Maybe the husband and wife should just write one letter and mail merge it to all of the gracious gift givers and be done with it.
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[...] Jeremy’s wondering the appropriate way to respond to a thank you. Thanks for the blog Jer. [...]
Good point. Another postal pet peeve of mine is the Christmas Card tradition where you get a card from a long lost friend/family member and the only thing written in the card (note: Christmas cards are bigger than the average thank you note so you would think more could be written) is “Merry Christmas the Smith Family.” Well, no duh. I know you wish me a Merry Christmas even though we haven’t heard from you since your last Christmas card. Why don’t you take an extra moment to tell me what’s going on in your life or just save the buck and buy your kid another toy he doesn’t need. Dang, a call would be nice as well. Anyway, that really annoys me. Back to slacking off.
Until I came to the US, I never heard of Thank you notes. Where I come from, we usually reciprocate the gift at some point in time or simply say thank you and invite you to a good hearty meal or to a glass of wine. Before the US I’ve never seen cards for all occasions you can think of (second cousin’s favorite pet’s first tooth ache, 20th anniversary of the 4th birthday, etc.) with a pre-printed message. I do admit that some of the pre-printed cards can be funny but still…the brain doesn’t need to think anything too personalized anymore. You just have to shop at the right card store… I suspect this is not really an American tradition but a Hallmark tradition, i.e. “buy more cards” tradition. I know that our lives are hectic and in the US people move more often but you know, there’s technology to support communication - so I tolerate no excuse - and if everything else fails, the post office still delivers letters!…