Laura Newell: A lament for the letter as the ding of an email can’t replace the thrill of the post

Deepest apologies to the people of my adopted homeland, but unless you’ve lived in a country like the UK where your post drops through the front door and not into some dinky little box at the end of the driveway, you’ll never truly understand just how exciting getting a letter in the post can be. There’s nothing quite like the heart-stopping thud of an envelope hitting the front doormat. The anticipation is palpable. Is it a birthday card, exam results, the job offer you’ve been praying for, or maybe just the gas bill, a speeding fine or an appointment reminder from your dentist? It doesn’t matter. Until you reach the door and open it, anything is possible. Sadly, it’s a joy experienced by fewer and fewer households these days. And in a sign of things to come, postal services around the world are accepting, and adapting, to a new reality. Denmark is leading the way, with public letter deliveries across for the country — famous for Lego, fairy tales and wind power — going the way of the dodo. For Danes, there will be no more rushing down the stairs to rip open an envelope with feverish intensity to find out whether it holds an invite to a party or a love letter from a long-distance beau. Reports announced the sad news this week, all pointing to the inevitable demise of old-fashioned mail thanks to our preference for digital communication. Not one person I spoke to this week expressed surprise, asking when (not if) Australia might follow suit. Many also suggested that “surely cash can’t be far behind?” Now, we’re not talking the loss of parcels here, deliveries of which topped 103 million in just four weeks between November 1 and December 1 here in Australia. We’re talking good, old-school envelope-and-stamp letters. In August, the chief of Denmark’s PostNord — the equivalent of our Australia Post — told media that Danes were, on average, receiving just one “snail mail” letter a month. In fact, since 2000, the volume of letters handled by the business had nosedived more than 90 per cent — down from about 1.4 billion to only 110 million last year. A law that opened the country’s postal market to private competition and also removed a tax exemption from the price of a stamp, sharply driving up the price to about 29 Danish Krone, or $6.83, was the final nail in the coffin and PostNord delivered its last letter on Tuesday, ending 401 years of service. But while Denmark’s snail mail drop-off was the sharpest in Europe, according to a 2024 McKinsey study, the country of hygge is far from alone. Norway and Spain saw a 76 per cent decline between 2008 and 2023, followed by Finland at 70 per cent, Italy at 68 per cent and Portugal at 66 per cent. Switzerland and Germany were the outliers, with deliveries dropping 39 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively. But even still, Deutsche Post says it’s struggling and in March slashed 8000 jobs. Over in the UK, those front doormats that elicit such nostalgia in me are, too, looking bare. Spruiking it as a measure to “deliver a better all-round service,” the Royal Mail has clearly taken a look at its 64 per cent decline in its snail mail service and will start the new year by scaling back second-class letter deliveries to only every other weekday and lowering targets for first-class deliveries. All in the name of “sustainability” and “reliability,” of course. Here in Australia, the number of letters delivered plunged 72 per cent between 2006-07 and 2023-24 with “bulk transactional presentment mail” representing 65 per cent of what is still delivered. Think bank statements, power bills and the like. Shockingly, the decline could actually have been much worse, according to experts who’ve studied the trends, cushioned a bit between 2021 and 2023 thanks for our cost-of-living crisis driving increases in financial institution communication, a post-pandemic rebound in promotional mail and the 2022 Federal election. So, what’s behind the decline? Well, the fact we have the term “snail mail” really says it all, right? Email is free and instantaneous and there’s no shortage of apps to keep us all in touch. Meanwhile, even sending a postcard to someone here in Australia will these days set you back $1.70 (although, as a festive gift, good ol’ AusPost reduced the price of sending a small Christmas card to just 65c last year). Recent improvements in internet and email security, reliability and safety — as well as the ability to easily scan an image using a smartphone — mean that most people are now happy to share signed documents via the internet. That, in my view, was probably the death knell for the standard letter. So, would the loss of the humble letter really matter? We’ve found a better way to communicate — faster, more personalised, better for the environment, right? Perhaps. But I fear we’ll lose something special if we give up on snail mail altogether. Each year on Epiphany, as I take down our Christmas decor and carefully un-clip each greetings card from the little Santa-hat holder we’ve had since my husband and I were first together, I open each one and read it for a final time. I think of the person who sent it, remembering all the times we’ve spent together, before laying it, with some ceremony, in the recycling bin. It gives me immense joy, satisfaction and a sense of connection. But this January 6, it’s a ritual I’ll have to forgo — we did not receive one physical card this year. Instead, we had a host of “video cards” land in our family inbox with cheery little ditties playing behind animated, but often impersonal, messages of love and peace. Cute and still thoughtful. But somehow less human, too.