THE season’s first Christmas card arrived in the letter box this week, sent by a friend overseas.

Aged in her 90s, she has been known to write about 200 cards each year, often including a letter as well to keep in touch with her many friends and relatives across the world.

Few could match such dedication to handwritten correspondence and, it seems increasingly obvious, still fewer would care to try.

Personal letters sent through the mail, written without resort to technology, are fast becoming an oddity.

Australia Post reports the volume of domestic addressed letters sent in Australia has fallen by 25.3 per cent in the past six years.

“This year our posties delivered 1.2 billion fewer letters than they did in 2007-08,” a spokesperson says.

“Despite declining letter volumes, we’re still seeing lots of Christmas cards being sent around the country and overseas this year.

“Australians enjoy sending and receiving their Christmas greetings through the post, it’s a more personal and real experience.”

Indeed, last year Australian children sent more than 150,000 letters to Santa.

But special occasions aside, how often do we put pen to paper?

Judging by shoppers outside Wodonga’s post office this week, handwritten letters don’t figure prominently in our lives.

“I could probably count on the fingers of one hand how many letters I’ve written in my life,” Rod Klein says.

“And received, unfortunately,” he adds.

“That’s the result, you see.”

Mr Klein, of Sandy Creek, says he prefers to send emails and talk directly to people.

“I don’t have a huge need to have a huge circle of pseudo-friends so I don’t use Facebook,” he says.

But he does add a personal touch to any Christmas cards he might send to family and friends.

“I usually write a little inscription wishing people all the best and if there’s a special reason to say more, I say more,” he says.

Nadine Royal, of Wodonga, and Albury’s Stephanie Lanfranchi rely on phone calls, texts and Facebook rather than the written word.

“I don’t really do Christmas cards either,” Miss Lanfranchi, 20, says.

“My family, I just talk to them on the phone on the day, really, and other friends I catch up with.”

Her grandparents and other relatives may still send some letters, but it’s not an activity she or her friends have ever done regularly.

“Probably only in primary school,” she says.

“No-one knows anyone’s postal address.”

Jessie Hull, having been a secretary for 25 years, favours using a computer to handwriting but plans to send about 50 Christmas cards this year to relatives all over Australia. 

“I’m about the only one left in Wodonga,” she says.

In Adrian McLean’s family, one member sends out Christmas cards on behalf of everyone but the Albury man makes more use of the telephone himself.

“I use the internet for other things but not for communication, I don’t use Facebook,” he says.

Gundowring’s Mariusz Wiaczek admits he doesn’t write much.

“Just telephone,” he says.

“I don’t do Facebook, I don’t do social media, nothing like that, so if I want to talk to them, I’ll do this (face to face) or over the phone.”

Chris Kemper, who was checking her post office box, proved an exception to the trend.

“I do like doing a bit of hand writing, I’ve still got a few letter sets,” she says.

“It’s more personal; I’ve got lots of letters I’ve kept from when I had a pen pal.”

Asked if she holds on to emails as well, the Wodonga resident has to think for a moment.

“Yes I do; some junky ones I throw away, but there are personal ones that I keep,” she says.

Yet Mrs Kemper does not ignore modern alternatives.

“I’ve sort of switched over at Christmas time to doing one big letter and emailing that off,” she says.

“But with the cards, even if I do a little bit of a print-out I still hand write in there.”

In February, Weekend Pulse told the story of East Albury’s Betty Myles, 90, who had exchanged letters with her American pen pal for 77 years.

“I didn’t realise it was so long, I just kept writing,” Betty said at the time.

“We used to tell our problems if we had any, she was very understanding that way.”

Very few relationships last that long, let alone one dependent on the physical effort of writing and sending mail across the world.

How many Bettys can we expect in the future?

Academic Andrew Mashman, of Charles Sturt University, says his own daughter, 9, made a pen pal after meeting a girl at camp.

“They exchanged about two letters and then it stopped,” he says.

But Mr Mashman, an adjunct lecturer in marketing, communication and project management, feels Facebook groups, online forums and other internet options have replaced traditional pen pals and diaries.

“It happens slightly different to the way it did,” he says.

“People do trust these sources like their best friend.

“And journals these days would be a blog.”

Mr Mashman remembers being moved by the story of a father who created a Google Mail account for his unborn child and then regularly posted to it.

“Using technology to get a record of things,” he says.

“It’s a modern twist, that sort of thing may be the way of the future.”

Judged purely by speed and convenience, many other options trump handwritten letters.

“Now smart phones are awesomely powerful,” Mr Mashman says.

“They have a big enough screen you can read a bit if you have a few moments and watch a bit, post from most places.

“You can see the advantage of that to nearly anybody who’s comfortable carrying that technology.

“It’s part of the death of the letter.”

A decline he does not see being reversed.

“There’s likely to be some new retro angle of letter writing because no-one’s doing it,” he says.

“It will become quirky again because it’s a lost skill.

“But never in the volume of the past.”

Over centuries, letters have been stored and treasured, to be brought out and re-read years later.

Will modern forms of communication, especially those driven by the internet, also endure?

Last year PC Mag reported that CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, celebrated the 20th anniversary of making worldwide web technology available on a royalty-free basis by restoring the first ever website.

Is the implication that nobody thought it too important to preserve the site in the first place?

Yet in 2012 a letter written by Mary Queen of Scots in 1554 sold at auction — someone must have looked after that one.

Mr Mashman believes few people will keep modern correspondence in the same way.

“It’s the tactility of written stuff; I doubt people print out emails, even from family,” Mr Mashman says.

At Charles Sturt University exams are still written by hand owing to security concerns and his students, unused to the practice, can struggle with that.

“It leaves a bitter taste in their mouth,” he says.

“There are less and less incentives to want to write.”

As HotHouse Theatre’s present production Letters From The Border explores, writing to newspapers continues to be a popular way of putting your views across.

For more than a decade The Border Mail’s editorial librarian Lexie McIntosh has collated these letters and the number that come in handwritten has declined markedly.

“It’s really only about one in 20,” she says, adding that some of those, “do take a bit of deciphering”.

Instead more people send emails or faxes while website comments may also fulfil their needs.

“They go in waves; sometimes you think ‘Oh, I wish a few people would write in’,” Mrs McIntosh says.

“But then other times, subjects come up and they come in by the dozens.”

Perhaps ultimately communication methods old and new can make use of each other’s advantages.

The world is full of insightful letters composed by significant people throughout history, but could we access them easily without the internet?

And the most prolific letter writer can rarely expect the international impact and influence possible through a succinct tweet.

American commentator Edward Long puts it well: “Social media is to letter writing as Katrina was to New Orleans”.

A clever thought worth sharing, yet he didn’t write that to me; I found it in an online post ...