New Year’s Greeting Cards
2023 has just started! How do you spend these days?
We Japanese usually send New Year’s Card to family, relatives and friends.
What is “New Year’s Greeting Cards”
We call “New Year’s Greeting Cards” 年賀状(nengajyou, ねんがじょう). Once in a year we exchange this postal card with friends or relatives or coworkers. Usually, we write and send this post card in December to be delivered on New Year’s Day. We write messages and recent private news to wish a happy new year each other. We often have a picture of that year’s zodiac animal printed in the card. Zodiac animal for 2023 is Rabbit/Hare(うさぎ)!
New Year’s Greeting Card is similar with the practice of exchanging Christmas Cards in foreign countries.
Typical messages
There are some typical messages for this card. Here are examples.
- あけましておめでとうございます (akemashite omedetougozaimasu) means “A happy new year”
- 去年はたいへんお世話になりました (kyonenha taihen osewani narimashita) means “ Thank you for your kindness last year”.
- 今年もよろしくお願いします (kotoshimo yorosiku onegaisimasu) means “Wish keeping good relationship with you in new year”
- 今年もよりよい年でありますように(kotoshimo yoriyoi toshide arimasuyouni) means “ Wish you will be happier than last year ”
And we add some private news or massages, for example, “I married last year”, “We had new kid last year”, “Let’s meet again soon” and so on.
I wanna introduce two small additional topics related with New Year’s Card.
Lottery
New Year’s Card is a postcard issued by Japan Post. Each post card has printed own number for lot. Japan Post announces winning number around mid-January every year. One who has this number can get television, food gift and stamp set and so on by Japan Post. This is kind of promotion for the card by Japan Post. I could get stamp set only so far though…
SNS
These days many people use social network services (SNS) like LINE, Facebook and Twitter etc. More young generation use these social network services for saying “Happy New Year” instead of New Year’s Card. It is very interesting that telecommunication companies announce to phone users to refrain from sending messages around midnight of January 1st because too big data may cause some problem on telecommunication system.
Anyway, sending message by postal card is good means of communication, I think. These days we rarely send letter written by hand. If you get postcard, you will feel something special. In addition, this letter may be the chance to communicate with people you rarely communicate in daily life.
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