Nectarine

Welcome to the first annual(?) Nectarine Holiday Card Exchange!

To sign up, please fill out this Google Form. (Best I could do on short notice.) The deadline to sign up is November 9th, after which you can't edit your info. You can choose how many cards you'd like to send and thus how many you'll receive. You can request not to send cards across the ocean. Your recipients may not get you as one of their recipients. Only the people who have you as a recipient will be able to see your address.

You're welcome to participate even if you don't celebrate any holidays this time of year. You can send (almost) any card you like, though holiday or winter themes could be nice. You do not need to buy anything, except postage. This is not a gift exchange. Feel free to make, print, or otherwise get creative with your cards but this is not a requirement; store bought cards are also fine.

Rules:

• You must send a card or postcard to every recipient you are assigned.
  
• Your card (or envelope) should include your Nectarine handle somewhere.
  
• Please be kind/civil. (No hate mail, offensive or demeaning letters, etc.)
  

Feel free to ask questions here or message me privately about anything related to this; I will get back to you as soon as I am able. If I find anyone violated the above rules, they will be banned from any future exchanges if we do this again.

Finally, it's not required, but I would like it if people posted pictures of the cards they received along with the handle of the sender to this thread. This lets people see what was sent and helps senders know theirs arrived. If you want to hold off photographing until you've received all of your cards, please know international cards could arrive after Christmas or very late winter. Therefore it might be nice to at least post the handles for the cards you've received. Don't forget to remove or cover any personal information in photos, such as addresses, before posting.

Americans:
You can check USPS's page for holiday cut-offs to find out when to send your letters to arrive in time for Christmas.

If postal deadlines are different for your country, feel free to post them below to help others out.

Q&A / FAQ

How much do I need to write in the card?
As much or as little as you like. However I would hope you will write more than just your handle.

What do people who have me as a recipient get to see?
The address you entered (of course), name (if filled out), and handle.

When do I get my list of recipients?
On or before November 12th. The exchange ends on the 9th, so I'll attempt to generate everyone's recipients over the weekend.

What will you do with all the data (addresses, etc.) after the card exchange is over?
Delete it.

More will be added here as people ask common questions.

A nice idea though not necessarily as cozy as perennial cookie exchange

I feel like cookies/biscuits don't do so well in the post. Perhaps a general sweets exchange? I'd happily trade NZ chocolate for Finnish salmiakki...

In any case I will definitely be signing up for the card exchange!

That might be fine (separately). But there is a story you're missing there.

I definitely want to participate. But the problem for me (and others in Russia) is our shitty national post. Sending something through it is like playing a lottery. The travel time for the card is also unpredictable (if it will be dilivered at all). So some cards may arrive next summer instead of this Christmas

Wine?

Please do not send wine. Not all countries' postal systems are OK with sending private individuals alcohol.

I'd be more worried about the glass than the alcohol content. Maybe you could send one of those little paper boxes of wine. Unfortunately I don't think beer is packaged that way.

I say join anyway. It seems in my limited experience that sending out from Russia arrives in a reasonableish amount of time. It's just incoming items that take (a while) longer.

Join it, Rumpel. No matter how early or late, those things are still very good and enjoyable. =)

This is awesome. I've just signed up for it. Definitely happy to send one out to any one of you all cool demoscene people.

Awesome

Thank you all for joining!

This is the last day to join the card exchange. I'm closing the form tonight around 10pm PST.

I've generated all the recipients, and your PMs with them will all go out very shortly. I had a program generate the mappings and it tried its best to ensure everyone's request was fulfilled, but some who asked for a lot of cards may be sending and receiving a different number of cards. We only had 17 participants, which is pretty good, so I'm not complaining.

If you don't like how this turned out, or think I should have determined senders and recipient mappings differently, I am open to feedback so let me know how I can improve it for next year. If you find a mistake (such as being asked to send more cards than you requested via the Google form), let me know and I can reassign the extras to those who got less people to send to than they requested.