Christmas cards 'help rekindle friendships'

Wednesday, 7 December 2011 10:22 AM

Do you need some incentive to write proper Christmas cards this year? Research shows one in four Brits (26%) polled said that they have rekindled a friendship through sending or receiving a Christmas card, while nearly a quarter (23%) said it had helped them get in touch with a friend or family member they had not spoken to in over a decade.

Print cards still outnumber digital e-cards by 2:1 with the average Brit planning to send 28 by post and 14 cards digitally this December. Heathrow wants to encourage us to keep the traditional methods of Christmas greetings alive, as it hands out 15,000 Christmas cards for passengers to freely send anywhere in the world.

Destinations for cards mentioned in their Christmas poll including international destinations. The average card travels 80 miles to reach its destination.

They also found 31% of people polled will post cards to Europe, while many more will be writing cards bound for Australasia and North America (19% and 18% respectively).

Normand Boivin, Chief Operating Officer at Heathrow, said: "We're delighted to be offering passengers the chance to connect with their loved ones wherever they may be this Christmas."

Heathrow's Christmas card is also available online as an ecard. The design, by acclaimed artist Rob Ryan, features two passengers connecting from across the world and includes the words "days became hours until hours eventually became minutes and then finally it was merely seconds until all of the time that I had been away from you had dissolved and I was back safe with you again".

A donation from each card was given to Heathrow's charity of the year, Macmillan Cancer Support. Heathrow is expecting more than 3.5 million passengers to pass through its doors between 15 Dec and 3 January alone - that's lots of families and friends getting together for Christmas.