Illustration by Charles Dana Gibson
This is by way of being a poll. What I want to know is this: how important in this digital age is the hand-written thank-you note?
My mother taught us always, always, always to write a thank-you note, as soon as possible, for any gift we received. In fact when we were young and given toys, we weren’t allowed to play with them until the thank-you had been written and approved. They didn’t have to be fancy. Here’s an example of a perfectly acceptable thank-you note from those days.
Dear Nana,
Thank you very much for the teddy. I like it very much. I have named it Nice.
love,
Fern
That sort of brevity didn’t pass muster as we got older; on the other hand no one was checking over our thank-you’s when we were in high school. By then we were so well trained no one had to!
Customs of saying thank you differ a lot from country to country. Here in the States it is customary to call the hostess a day or two after a dinner party and tell her again what a marvelous time you had and how good the food was, how remarkable the other guests. In Italy that doesn’t happen. People come, they have a marvelous time, eat great food in exceptional company, say thank you and go home, and that’s enough (although I’ve noticed a creeping post-event thank-you trend amongst friends who have spent time in other countries).
So my question is, are written thank-you’s, birthday cards and so forth out of date and hopelessly old-fashioned now that we can dash off a heart-felt e-mail and subscribe to clever e-card sites? Please tell me! We sent out e-Christmas cards this year (again) and I’m feeling a little squirrely about it. I enjoy so much receiving actual Christmas and birthday cards from other people (any greeting is always welcome). But I don’t feel the same way about thank-you notes. Somehow to me e-mail seems quite a sufficient medium for gratefulness. I’d certainly like to know what you all think about it though (if you think of it at all), and if you tell me… I’ll thank you.
An Ex-Expatriate 
As a child we always called or visited our relatives and said thank you. When I was a young adult living on my own, with a meager paycheck, and my aunts would send a Valentine/birthday gift, I would send a thank you letter. I really appreciated the gift and would let them know. I always made my kids write a note for a gift, and they had to be hounded a couple of times. The phrase, ‘you may not use it until you’ve send a thank you ‘ has crossed my lips. I send thank you notes for gifts now. I have a box of flowery note cards on top of my desk ready to go. Now that I am the aunt sending gifts, I really appreciate, but rarely ever get, a thank you. Since all of us live apart it would be a lovely time, in my mind, to say hi and thank you, but I am the dinosaur. I find it rude and annoying. I am not motivated to send more frankly. Now my oldest nephew is 37 so when does the gift giving stop anyway.
I believe the hand-written note retains all the charm and graciousness it always had and is the best form. However, I think only old folks like us know what a “bread and butter” note is. In this day and age, I believe the e-mail (or even the tweet, sad to say) has replaced it and would be considered acceptable except in elite circles.
While I was taught as you were, I never internalized it and embraced what I saw as a more relaxed and modern form of “thank you”. I remain embarrassed by my lack of social grace since I do know better.
I know better, too, but still seldom put actual pen to actual paper. That may change, though, based on the ideas in all these comments.
I have writer’s block when it comes to penning notes – it’s where my perfectionism is most active in its destructive influence. Between that and the fact that arthritis has made handwriting painful – well, I guess I’d rather express gratitude any other way. My bad.
Ah, but the person who receives your note will surely not be grading it – whereas it seems they might grade you if you don’t send it at all! What’s a perfectionist to do? (e-mail! telephone!)
YES to “Thank You” notes for gifts. Although we are not related, Fern, we share the same mother. As children, we could not play with or use a gift until the TYN had been written. I followed the same path with my boys. Of course they hated this as much as I did but, surprisingly, now they thank me for the training. A TYN sets one apart in the business world and is a positive force. Gratitude is an important trait and becoming less common. Taking the time to acknowledge the time/energy/money/effort a gift represents is gracious.
Full disclosure requires me to admit that I have become lazy in my old age. Yes, I will send an e-mail for ‘local’ gifts if I have thanked the giver in person. Far away gifts still receive a written note. I try to remember to telephone my thanks after a dinner party; t-r-y is the operative word.
Fern, you showed me a website for greeting cards that I use for birthdays instead of sending a paper card – or sometimes, in addition to sending a snail mail card. It depends on the ‘who where why when’. EX: an important Bday for someone out of town seems somehow more significant than a close-by friend celebrating a non-decade event.
I love fine writing paper and have several varieties. I even treasure my fountain pen for note-writing. When Crane’s closed their local store, I was saddened because it meant that I could no longer fondle their selections. Ordering my monogramed papers became an online affair which was not nearly as intimate as choosing the paper, ink and style in person. I sound like a grumpy old woman and do not mean to be so. Yes, I miss some of the fripperies associated with writing notes. I also enjoy the ease of e-mail so for the purposes of your query, I sit squarely on the fence (if such a thing were possible!).
Move over. I seem to be sharing your fence – and your passion for fine paper.
Oh, count me a fan! Particularly of teaching the young to write (not type) a note. It is not just the writing of the note that helps: The process develops a spirit of gratitude that will serve well in later life. (It’s like requiring that every young adult have a waitress or bartending job at some point — the experience of service, how it works and what it feels like, is INCREDIBLY useful throughout life.) I still write thank-you notes for gifts, and I love to get them. For dinner parties, I call, because here in Washington every host and hostess likes to do a party post-mortem. As for Christmas cards, for some reason we’re getting MORE of the hard copy ones as years go by. The power of TinyPrints and other online options has made expressing yourself in print so easy. (I was amused to see that Paperless Post, the vendor for several years at the leading edge in high-end e-stationery and e-delivery for invitations, holidays, etc., has introduced . . . a print line of stationery!)
And don’t even get me started on how much I love paper. Fern, your adopted country makes the BEST for writing, Pineider oh-so-smooth papers. Divine.
Betsy, you’re bang on about waitressing (or waiting). There’s nothing that makes you receive a $5 tip with boundless joy and gratitude more than not receiving any tips at all from some of your tables. I always thought people didn’t understand that tips were pretty much ‘it’ for pay – that $1.20/hour I got when waitressing a hundred years ago didn’t go very far. And thanks for the tip on TinyPrints – I didn’t know about them somehow.
Having shared your Mother, I am equally well trained. I always write thank you notes for gifts and for dinner parties. I do so because the “giver” in both cases has given thought, time and energy in an effort to give me pleasure. And adoring presents and food I am almost always pleased! Seems to me the least I can do in response to such generosity is take 10 minutes to pen a quick note of thanks and attach a 41 cent (? – the forevers don’t announce their value) stamp. Plus I really like lovely note paper and cards so using them gives me even more pleasure! It’s all one big pleasure fest for me!
I KNOW you always write thank-you notes, and it was guilt at having received your last (after not having written you a ‘real’ one) that precipitated this blog post in the first place. But I think rather than waste time feeling guilty I should just follow your good example. stay tuned on that.
Email and e-cards are certainly more environmentally friendly, but I will never shake the habit of writing snail mail thank you notes, something that Fern’s wonderful mother role-modeled for me so persuasively that I was hooked for life. We still do snail mail Christmas cards, too (we’re very much into the annual photograph), but we receive fewer and fewer each year. So who knows; perhaps someday we’ll give that antiquated custom up (although I suspect only when we are in our dotage)…
And I look forward to and love getting your (and others’) annual Christmas cards. I’m even a fan of the photo-copied annual catch-up of family doings. As for the environment, paper disintegrates pretty fast, don’t you think? Now if you were putting your cards into plastic bottles and hurling them into the sea, that would be another matter altogether…
My mother made us write thank you notes, and I insisted that my son did it. I think an email now is fine, as long as you do something. I find with most Italians, out of sight is out of mind. My ex relatives greet me long a long lost friend when I am there, but never contact me otherwise.
Isn’t the out-of-sight thing funny? I’ve had the same experience with some friends there. I think you’re right that the most important thing is to show some gratitude, and the method is, perhaps, of lesser meaning.
I remember those days. Unfortunately, writing is becoming another lost art!
Read on, though – many, it seems, still engage in the art of note-writing. Guess I’ll have to sharpen my nibs.
Perhaps this is a Canadian thing or maybe its simply my family, but we never wrote thank you notes for gifts. A phone call might be required depending on where the “gifter” lived and who they were, i.e. my elderly aunt yes, my cousin who lived halfway across the country no. As for dinner parties, I’ve never receive or given a call afterwards. Mind you, I would never show up empty-handed even if I was told I didn’t need to bring something and if I ran into the host/hostess later I would say how much I enjoyed it.
Hmmmmm, you’re in the minority on this one, it seems. The gift-bringing practice is followed in Italy, and usually here in the States as well, I think. Frequently it’s hard to know what to bring, isn’t it? One gets tired of the ubiquitous bottle of wine.