Guidelines for Sending Business Christmas Cards

Whether you own a sole proprietorship or are the CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation, sending business Christmas cards can serve to boost your customer relations and ultimately improve your bottom line. About half of all businesses send holiday cards - sometimes with unintended negative consequences. Here are some guidelines to ensure that your thoughtful gesture will be interpreted in the best possible light.

Selecting the Right Card 

Every business has an image it portrays, whether through its logo, its branding efforts, or its marketing plan. The design of business holiday cards you select should reinforce that image. If, for example, you are a stockbroker, a Wall Street winter scene might be appropriate. On the other hand, if you are a pediatric dentist, more whimsical greeting cards are in order. For most businesses, and elegant and tasteful card is always appropriate.

When it comes to choosing a greeting card company, there are many online sources for business Christmas cards. Make sure to choose one that is well established and has a track record of satisfying customers. The best online greeting card companies will send you sample cards upon request, and offer personalization, free coordinating foil-lined envelopes, and printed envelopes.

When ordering business holiday cards, keep in mind that not everyone celebrates Christmas. A card expressing "season's greetings" or "warm holiday wishes" will prevent you from unintentionally offending those who aren't of the Christian faith.

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Sending Your Cards

In business, timing is everything. Although you have some leeway in sending business holiday cards, the rule of thumb is to send them between December 1 and December 15. If you're a business-to-business company, keep in mind that many businesses close or have reduced hours during the holiday season, so make sure that your card arrives in advance of the holidays.

In order to send your holiday cards out in a timely fashion, make sure to order them early. Personalized business Christmas cards can take a few weeks to produce, so try and place your order by mid-October.

The Personalized Touch

The purpose of sending business greeting cards is to engender warm feelings in the recipient. That won't happen if your Christmas cards have address labels and are run through a postage meter. Expend the extra effort and have someone on your staff (who has nice handwriting) address the envelopes by hand. In addition, use a postage stamp instead of a meter when applying postage.

In the same vein, although you should have your cards printed with the company's name, the cards should also be signed by hand. The best approach is to have those who most closely work with the recipient sign the card by hand. If yours is a small enterprise, have a card signing party one afternoon, and have each person on your staff sign each card. This will go a long way towards making a positive impression on the recipient.

Be a Gracious Recipient

There's little doubt that your company will also receive business holiday cards from your vendors and associates. Be a gracious recipient and display the cards in your workplace. It will not only bring a bit of holiday cheer to your office, but it will also please those who have a sent a card to you and see it displayed.

Give One, Get One: Christmas Cards

Christmas is one of the best times of the year. It is anticipated greatly and loved by all. Some people begin planning for the next year's Christmas at the beginning of January. They think about the parties they will host, the people they will see, and the relatives and friends they will reconnect with. Those who love shopping hunt for the perfect gifts all throughout the year. There are many special traditions that people celebrate around Christmastime. One of the best traditions for many people is the exchange of Christmas cards.

Exchanging Christmas cards is an important part of many peoples' holiday. Because gifts can be really expensive, most people choose to send many people in their life the simple gift of a card. And what a gift a Christmas card can be. A thoughtfully chosen card with a personalized note inside makes anyone feel special around the holidays. If there are way too many people on your gift list this year considering giving unique Christmas cards instead.

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If you are looking for something different or a way to put even more personal touch into your cards, try making your own Christmas cards this year. This way you can choose the papers you like, the colors your friends and family enjoy most, and you can design a card uniquely for each family on your list. Another great benefit of making your own Christmas cards is including your children in the process. Allow them to roll up their sleeves and get creative. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, and family friends will love whatever creation they come up with. Making cards yourself will allow you to save money that we all know is valuable around the expensive holiday season.

Exchanging Christmas cards can be a great way to keep in touch with friends all over the country and the world. As you have opportunities to travel and meet new friends, committing to exchange Christmas cards can be a great way to stay connected even after your travels end. It is a special thing to stay in relationship with people who all come together to celebrate Christmas each year. Rather than sending packages all around the world, you can save money, time and still be thoughtful by sending a card.

And perhaps the best thing about exchanging Christmas cards is just that: you exchange them. Not only to do you take the time and energy to prepare cards for family and friends, but you also can anticipate receiving cards from people near and far. Getting the mail each afternoon can quickly become the highlight of a families' day during the holiday season. You feel loved and valued each time you open an envelope and get to discover the unique and beautiful card that is inside. You can experience the joy and care that your friends and family experienced as they created the perfect Christmas cards for you and yours.

As Christmastime rolls around this year, take time to cherish each important person in your life by creating unique Christmas cards for each of them.

Give Me Some of those Holiday Homecoming Blues

With the drop in temperature comes a certain dawning, the formation of a certain mood. Most people tend to associate the Holidays with drops in temperature and colder weather, but this is the general comfortable cold and not the frigid chill of deep winter. It is also during these days that normally sane and stable people can end up going into a bit of a panic, with all the last-minute shopping and the “I can't think of a gift” relatives. For the most part, all this stress and borderline insanity is pretty much worth it once the dust settles. The Holidays, with all the reunions and homecomings that come with them, can be a source of some truly unexpected amounts of stress and anxiety, usually from the same general sources.

Students coming home from their first year in college tend to cause quite a bit of pressure and stress on the parents who are going to receive them. There's quite a bit of getting used to, for one thing. Teenagers coming home from college for the first time have also been away from home for the first time. Having gotten used to living without parental interference, they can often cause a lot of tension when they behave like the independents they perceive themselves to be while the parents would rather still have them under their control. Parents making themselves seem unable to really accept that their child is not the same person that left their home the year before can often end up fighting short bouts of depression, though anger is also a common response. However, defiance of parental authority is not the only aspect of a family relationship that can get stretched during the season.

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Stress and anxiety also come into play in the preceding days, particularly the period where preparations and gift shopping enter the “critical zone.” There are expectations to be fulfilled and images to maintain, which some Eastern peoples might associate with the concept of “face.” The drive to make sure each and every little detail fits a certain image or projects a certain image that the decorator wants it to can become a major source of stress in some communities. This can be compounded further if the decorator is intent on making things perfect for visiting family members, such as kids who have been off to college or close friends who have been working overseas.

All this pressure and over-extending stress is clearly a negative thing. The effects generally pass once the Holidays are over, but certain situations can take time to really sink into the average person. The Holidays are the times when people come home after a prolonged absence and hope to find everything untouched and unchanged from when they left. Yet, they come to realize that they're not the same people as when they left and little things they missed, like the way their room was decorated or where their favorite little trinket from childhood was placed, have changed. The adjustments can take time because both parties don't inform each other of these changes, which may seem insignificant to one side, but can have impact on the emotional health of the other.

Getting over the Christmas Giving Blues? Take the Christmas Budget Challenge.

Getting over the Christmas Giving Blues? Take the Christmas Budget Challenge.

Written by Bernie Wiemers Copyright 2005 http://www.my-wealth-plan.com

With Christmas just around the corner, our focus is slowly starting to shift from our work commitments to Christmas and with it comes the annual Christmas spending spree. Unfortunately many families don't set a Christmas budget and they rely on their credit cards to get them through the festive season.

Shortly after Christmas these same families will also develop symptoms of the "Christmas Giving Blues" which can include an upset stomach, lack of sleep and anxiety.


You know that feeling. You spend up big, charge it on the card, and then spend the next couple of months worrying about how you are going to pay off your Christmas debts while vowing never to let this happen to you again.

Unfortunately, this is a reality for a lot of families every Christmas and they just don't seem to be able to break out of the cycle.

This year, give yourself and your family a Christmas gift and take the "Christmas Budget Challenge" and enjoy your Christmas without the suffering the Christmas Blues.

There are two parts to the Christmas Budget Challenge:

1. Put in place a strategy that will help you survive Christmas with as little pain as possible.

2. Put in place a strategy that will give you a plan to enjoy your next Christmas. This plan will also run itself without you even thinking about it.

Let's start by putting in place a plan that will hopefully make this Christmas a little easier on your hip pocket:

1. Have a look at your finances and set an upper limit that you can afford for your Christmas spending. Allocate a certain amount to Gifts and a certain amount to other Christmas expenses. This is the start of your Christmas budget.

2. Leave the credit card at home and pay for Christmas with money wherever possible.

3. Keep track of all your Christmas spending. A good way of doing this is by carrying a small notebook and pencil and writing your purchases in it.

Gift Buying

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4. Call your relatives and agree that Gifts will only be purchased for the children

5. Take your Christmas Gift budget that was allocated in step 1 and divide it by the number of gifts you need to buy. This number will be the maximum you can spend on each gift.

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6. Take your Christmas Dinner budget and make a shopping list.

7. When you are doing your shopping use a calculator to make sure you stay within your Christmas budget.

8. Save money by looking for the cheaper priced goods on the top and bottom shelves. Try not to buy items that are on shelves at eye level, these are usually the higher priced items.

9. Try not to buy items that are located in the displays at the end of the shopping aisles, these items are usually more expensive than the items located in the aisles.

10. Compare prices of similar items and buy the cheaper item.

11. Remember that Christmas is only one day a year. You don't have to spend a weeks worth of grocery money on one day.

12. Ask each relative to provide a food dish, drinks or dessert.

 As soon as Christmas is over and the pain is fresh in your mind. You need to take action and put in place the second part of the "Christmas Budget Challenge". This next step will ensure that you have enough money for next Christmas

1. Add up all your Christmas expenses including gifts, food and any other costs.

2. Take the total of your Christmas expenses and divide it by the total amount of pays until next Christmas.

3. Open high interest bank account with the following attributes:
- No minimum starting balance
- Interest is accrued daily and billed monthly
- Interest rate on this bank account must be higher than the inflation rate.
- No bank charges

ING Direct and Citibank have an online banking account that may be suitable for your Christmas Budget account.

4. Organize an automatic bank transfer from your bank account to your Christmas Budget account. This transfer will be on each payday for the amount you worked out in step 2. It is important that this is automated because most people will not stick to this plan if it is a manual process.

5. When next Christmas comes around withdraw your money and repeat the process again.

You can get a free excel "Christmas Budget Challenge" spreadsheet from http://www.my-wealth-plan.com/christmasbudget.zip. Use this spreadsheet as a template for your Christmas Budget,

This plan is very simple and surprisingly effective and you will be able to enjoy your next Christmas without the suffering the Christmas Giving Blues.

Getting Into The Holiday Spirit

What comes to mind when you think about the holidays?

Do you groan, feeling burdened by all you have to do? Do you dread going shopping for gifts or cleaning up after a Christmas or Chanukah celebration?

Or, do you feel a sense of fun, of delight, of joy in the celebrating, giving and receiving?

Which part of you is in charge of the holidays – your judgmental self or your loving self?

 Think for a moment about the little child in you – the child that loved the holidays. What delighted you about Christmas or Chanukah? Most kids are really excited about receiving gifts, but many children also feel equally excited about giving gifts. Did you enjoy decorating your house?

Or, were the holidays a sad time, a time of heartbreak due to not having enough money? Or a time of loneliness due to the loss of a loved one? Were they a time of stress in your family? Was there abuse around the holiday time?

Whatever the situation of the past, you have an opportunity now, as an adult, to give your own inner child the Christmas or Chanukah he or she wants and deserves. You have an opportunity to move into gratitude for what you have rather than anxiety for all you have to do. Instead of choosing to dread or resist the holiday spirit, why not open to it, embrace it, feel the grace of it?

Let the child in you do the shopping for gifts. Let the child in you receive the delight of picking out just the right gift for a friend or loved one. Or let the child in you find some way to give, some way to share your love. Even if you are alone or poor, instead of feeling sorry for yourself, find a way to give your caring to someone who has less than you.

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The holiday spirit is about gratitude and giving. Take the opportunity to notice how fulfilling it is to joyously give rather than to resist or be angry about the work involved.
Take this opportunity to discover how full your heart feels when you choose to feel grateful rather than grumpy.

Feelings come from thoughts. If you choose to think, “Oh no, the holidays are here already. There is just too much work to do,” you may feel anxious and overwhelmed. If you choose to think, “What a drag to have to go out and buy presents,” you may feel resentful. If you choose to think, “Another holiday season and I am still alone,” you may feel depressed. If you choose to think, “This is just a commercial holiday so business can make money,” you may feel angry.

However, if you choose to think, “How can I make this fun?” you may feel excited. If you choose to think, “How can I give to others this holiday?” you may feel open hearted. If you choose to think, “I get to buy things for the people I love,” you may feel grateful.

So who do you want to be this holiday season? You can choose to be a Grinch, close-hearted and angry about Christmas. You can choose to be tense, anxious, judgmental, depressed, fearful, withdrawn, or resistant.

Or you can choose to be happy, peaceful, excited, grateful, loving, open hearted, and joyous. It is all up to you. How you feel is the result of how you choose to think about the holidays.

Why not try an experiment this holiday?” Refuse to allow negative thoughts. Instead, make a list of positive thoughts and as soon as a negative thought comes up, imagine changing channels on a TV, switching to the positive channel. Then notice how you feel!

Get Your Holidays Started With How The Grinch Stole Christmas Tickets

How the Grinch Stole Christmas tickets are always a great way to get you and your family into the holiday spirit, and this year, the classic book and film is coming to the theater stage. Dr. Seuss is one of the most unique writers in history, and his stories always give a different perspective on timeless lessons in the form of comedy and intriguing prose. We’ll take a look below at just how this story has become such a phenomenon.

About the Story

The story, predictably, is about the Grinch. The Grinch is an unsightly green creature with a heart that’s two sizes too small who lives with his only friend and companion, his dog Max, on the top of Mount Crumpit.  Mount Crumpit oversees Whoville, where the town’s residents, called the “Whos,” live amongst themselves.

As Christmas approaches, the Grinch becomes increasingly annoyed as he hears more bustle than normal from the town’s residents as they prepare for the forthcoming holiday. The Grinch does not like happiness, and he decides to act on his frustration in order to find himself some peace and quiet.

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The Grinch forms a plan to steal all the children’s Christmas gifts and holiday decorations in Whoville, as he believes that this will prevent Christmas from arriving. The Grinch comes down from the mountain and successfully steals everything he wants to take, and he is quite satisfied with his efforts.

However, the result of this crime spree is exactly where How the Grinch Stole Christmas tickets begin to reveal the message that’s delivered to every audience. Despite the absence of gifts and decorations, the people of Whoville still celebrate Christmas with the same zest and cheer.

The Grinch is stunned by this development, as he realizes that the holiday is about much more than gifts, decorations and other material things. As a result, the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes, and he is filled with the holiday spirit of giving and appreciation for what he has. His heart also grows by three sizes, and he basks in the acceptance of the townspeople when he returns everything he has stolen.

Overall, the works of Dr. Seuss are timeless in nature, and the stories’ audiences know no age limits. If you want to combine the holiday spirit, the gift of giving and a valuable lesson for your family or loved ones, How the Grinch Stole Christmas tickets will provide a solution for all of these desires.

General Festivities and Entertainment at Christmas

Christmas is described as a festive season therefore we should all engage
in activities during the season that provide entertainment, merriment and which
give pleasure. Because Christmas is about celebration, many types of festivities
can be found to suit all preferences to make the season a joyful one.
A readily available option is watching Christmas movies. This can be done
from the comfort of home or by spending a few hours out at the theater. A
wonderful option now available for obtaining movies is to rent them via the
Internet. It's an option that allows you to get any movie you want to see -
whether traditional, popular or a remake of an original title. There's also
fairly easy access to obscure movie titles, as well as movies with holiday or
Christmas themes.

Although Christmas movies embody the spirit of the season, you can also
take time out during Christmas to enjoy new releases that may or may not have a
holiday theme. Christmas is a good time to catch notable new releases because
they are  timed to be shown in theaters before the end of the year to be
considered for prestigious Oscar nominations.
Performances of Christmas plays that depict the Nativity scene are also
another popular entertainment during Christmas. Although these performances are
done year after year, they never grow old because of creative difference in
interpreting the story, and also in how each role is acted by different actors
every year.
The dramatization of the Nativity demonstrates the meaning of Christmas and can
also simplify the meaning of Christmas for children. Participation in the
Nativity is also an important activity for children in drama groups at schools
and church groups.
Along with depicting the meaning of Christmas, the Nativity play also portrays
moral lessons that can serve as an inspiration for the way to become a more
spiritual person and to live a better life. Watching or taking part in the
Nativity play at Christmas time can therefore affect your attitude and outlook
on life.

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Musical entertainment at Christmas can come from pausing during shopping to
listen to a choral group at the mall or downtown. It can also be entertaining to
simply hum along to a Christmas carol or song being played on the radio. Carols
as a tradition at Christmas is said to originate in England and France in the
Middle Ages. At the time, carols were dances accompanied by singing. The
tradition that Anglo-Saxons preferred was to have small choirs gather on the
village green and sing carols and Christmas songs to passersby. Over time, the
meaning of the word changed to refer to only certain types of songs.
The tradition of carols is also believed to evolve from the angels, shepherds
and Wise Men who bowed down to sing praises and to worship Baby Jesus.
For those who are really lovers of the arts, professional groups like
Orchestras, Symphonies, Conservatories and Choirs also offer splendid concerts
during Christmas. They will also sing Christmas carols and songs. But the
harmony of their voices accompanied by a full compliment of instruments provides
a richer and more melodious rendition of the carols that is unlikely to be heard
anywhere else.
Probably the most popular festivities at Christmas are parties, which seem to
happen everywhere all the time at Christmas. There are parties at work, home,
with friends and class parties at school. Even social hubs such as bars may have
special nights with different food and lower-priced drinks during Christmas.
It seems there is no end to the festivities during Christmas. It's always
important however to have a good time, to remember the unfortunate and to reach
out to them and to have fun but in a responsible manner.