Holiday Cards and Politics, Washing Away Diversity

Zazzle Family Example

Our oldest is turning 18 next Spring, which means our family has been sending out holiday photo cards for 18 years now. I started sending friends and family holiday cards back in college. Recenlty, I’ve been going through storage units and bins & bins of paperwork for a couple months, I’ve come to realize we’ve kept all of them. About 7 years ago I started putting the more recents card on rings, grouped by year and displayed as coffee table books during the holiday season. Over the past decade plus, I’ve felt like all of the original cards, predating our soon to be 18-year old, were lost, nope, they were sitting in bins filled with paperwork. I found so much, even cards from early in my career (the 90’s), names of people I thought I had forgotten, paired with faces I remember like yesterday.

Excuse me as I rant, now! As the holidays unfold this month, so does the stress of sending out holiday cards. As a write this post, I’ve already received our first holiday card well before thanksgiving. Over the years I’ve used various vendors for printing of our cards. For almost a decade, my go to vendor was Minted. Before that, it was Tiny Prints and more recently a high end vendor Cheree Berry Paper which is based in the mid-west. Cheree had unique designs, not commonly found, from the pop up window card, or the embellish yourself card with stickers. During COVID, I even used a local printer and created my own design.

Getting back to 2025, this is not our annual holiday card post, instead I need to point something out. As I started to search for a card design this year, I noticed a pattern showing up from site to site. I think I found a shift happening with the holiday card industry. We’ve all been watching the news, on how universities & federal agencies are falling victim to the Project 2025’s anti-LGBTQ agenda. It appears the holiday card industry is feeling the anti-woke agenda pressure. Last year I moved away from Cheree because delays I had with printing the previous two years. I returned to good old Minted, and as I started scrolling through pages of holiday themed photo cards, I noticed something missing, my families presence and representation.

Over the past decade, a lot of these online holiday card vendors started using photos of lesbian and gay couples and their families in their photo examples. On Minted, I noticed that scrolling through pages one through seven, there was not a single photo of gay or lesbian couple or a family photo for the first 7 pages of designs. Holiday 2024, there was at least 1-3 photos per page. Finally on page 8, we got one gay couple pop on in the grouping of example. Around page 10, finally a lesbian couple and a family photo.

I figured this was a fluke, so I started looking at other vendors. I went back to Cheree Berry, even though I knew I would not return to the production issues again. There was not a single example on the 7 pages of card designs on their site. Not one! I’ve chosen vendors over the years because of the diversity exhibited on their stores. About 12 years ago, is when a lot of holiday card vendors stated show Gay and Lesbian families and more diversity of people of color in their photo examples. The number of photos of people of color was always triple the number of LGBTQ. Over at Cheree, I also noticed that they only had 1 family of color on every third page. Representation it seems to be a thing of the past.

Shutterfly Couple

Next, I went over to TinyPrints next, thankfully they had many examples with families of color. It wasn’t until page 6 did I come across one gay family photo. That was it! Over at it’s parent company Shutterfly, which is being harolded as the best printing quality all over the net. It took me 9 pages to find a single LGBTQ photo, and it was young happy white gay couple celebrating their wedding. Not single gay or lesbian couple was featured in a photo with their kids in the first 12 pages of photo card examples. Of the 400+ photos on Shutterfly that I looked over, only 3 gay couple holiday cards examples appeared. In terms of the representation of families of color, they had 3 out 36 on the first page alone, thankfully that number increase greatly starting on page 5. Even more depressing as I returned to the their site, that one gay family photo is gone and I noticed a new problem.

While searching for Shutterfly’s elusive gay family photo, I found a interesting bait and switch. While I found gay and lesbian couple photos in the holiday section, when you clicked on said card design. The image went from the lesbian or gay couple to a straight couple on the ordering page. I went as far to click on a few of the straight couple design examples on those pages, and none of the photos were changed at all. What is Shutterfly trying to say here, is where my mind went. One thing was for sure, while they are choosing to decrease representation of our the LGBTQ on their site, they taking away the stories of diversity, and replacing it with this idea only straight people belong on their site.

Example of Dad Only Image

Over at Paper Culture it just got more depressing. Yes, they had one gay couple photo (no children) example, sometimes on every second or third page. There was not a single gay or lesbian family photo on the first nine pages of the photo card examples. Where it went weird, was the one dad photo with two kids. In the past on all these stores, I would combinations of a mom and their kids, sometimes a grandparent and kids, but a dad with his kids seemed to be on almost every page. I went back to other vendors sites, and saw the same trend appearing. I know, there are single dads out there buying photo cards for the holidays. But we are talking about not just one photo per page of the solo dad, we are talking several handfuls per site. Sadly the news over at Simply To Impress was no better. On their store, in the first ten pages of the card designs and not a single Gay or Lesbian couple or family. Even more distressing, I noticed they had several rainbow themed card designs that  had a straight white couple on it, except for the one with four black kids.

Things were looking grimm. I even when I went over to Paperless Post, where finally on page 4 of their photo card designs, I found a gay couple and a gay family photo. Sadly they had no lesbian couples or families in the first 7 pages of card designs. What is happening here is a systematic anti-woke agenda that wiped away a decade plus of progress. Around 2009, I started seeing vendors like Tiny Prints, and the following year Minted, starting adding photos with gay and lesbian families to their catalog of card examples. What is really happening here, there is no real way to determine if the recent wave in politics and industry being pressured by the maga anti-woke and project 2025 anti-LGBTQ agenda. For over a decade all of these companies showcased LGBTQ families and proudly. I think when a regime takes over the government and propagates media as weapon against small communities. I do wonder, where do we say no to crossing that line.

Some sites like Zazzle still have old designs still available.

While some companies like Minted, Tiny Prints and Paperless offered a small pittance of representation to my community. We are in dark days, when the straight community now controls the minority, even online. The erasure of the LGBTQ community in the greeting card market is more prevalent now, than ever. I paused my usual manic run to get our card produced. I kept searching but sadly, there are slim pickings out there. The big chains have truly taken over the industry. Speaking of big box, Zazzle is a possible option, while the first 4 pages was filled with many straight families of color. There wasn’t single gay or lesbian couple or family card until page 5. Then it was raining men, gay men and a gay family. Sadly no Lesbian couples, but plenty of straight white couples on every page. Seeing small companies like Cheree & Sugar Paper is disheartening. But it’s their choice, and as consumers, we need to make our own decisions. We are all seeing the tides change, some look at it as the tides are shifting in their direction, turning back the clock. But for many, we see those around us who are more in vulnerable, and hope that progress returns over corporate greed. While we try to be 100% in favor or respect to those in jeopardy and their causes. All we can do is try to make better choices.

Where does that our LGBTQ family in this dilemma. Do we rest on the laurel with companies like Minted & Zazzle, who gives us a little bit, or look to the smallest of the small out there. During COVID, life was nuts. For our holiday portraits during that second holiday season, I came up with a crazy idea of doing a photoshoot at our house. At the time, we were finally settled in late 2021 on the final design of our remodel. I gave the kids cans of spay paint and let them go wild on a exterior wall, and a holiday backdrop for our family portrait was reality. At the time, small business were struggling and I wanted to help one vendor who I had used on many occasions for school and scouts projects. I loved they work they have done for me and the card turned out great. For 2025, I return to the small business that went above and beyond four years ago.

Our card from 2021 printed by a local print shop!!!!

While I have to create the the designs for the card myself, I think going back to small business is the best choice for our family. I have hope that someday online vendors will return to being more inclusive with their sites. I understand when you have Christian nationalist organizations like million moms or the heritage foundation mounting attacks on your business, to protect your business. Being vocal about these attacks is more important, than caving and curating your business to their liking. Giving into this culture divide is the easy way out and I hope founders like Mariam Naficy and Cheree Berry find a way out of the dark cloud that is masking the anti-woke and anti-LGBTQ agenda. For now, wish me luck designing and good luck shopping for your cards. Happy to share some the research I found over the last week. I’ve even captured all of the design pages for all the sites as documented evidence, just in case.