Growing up, I didn’t even know what a thank you card was. No one in my family sent them, and my parents never even brought the subject up. I’m willing to bet my grandma nagged my parents about it but gave up, since she now reminds me that she expects thank you notes from my children.
When I got married, I was rudely thrust into the world of the thank you note. My husband’s family places a lot of importance on things like that. Getting the thank you notes out after a big event, like our wedding or baby shower, was a pain. Since then, however, it hasn’t been that bad. I feel very guilty if I don’t send a thank you note, and there have been times I’ve just never gotten around to it. I do think it’s important, and expect my kids to be involved in writing the thank you notes when they have a birthday or after Christmas. My daughter is old enough to write her own notes, and the boys sit down to sign their names to notes I write for them.
The thank you note craze among my in-laws is extreme enough that I almost asked a question on Fluther about the way I wrote thank yous after Christmas. I typed thank you letters on cute paper and had all of the kids sign them. I felt bad they weren’t hand-written!
However, if I don’t get a thank you note from someone I don’t really mind. I’ve slacked off enough to not be able to hold other people to that kind of standard. I know for a fact there are people in my husband’s family who only buy small, inexpensive gifts for some of the kids in the family because they never send thank you notes. They get mad when the nicer gifts are never acknowledged, even if the child (or parent of the child) says thank you when they first open the gift.