Britons are expected to send 141 million fewer Christmas cards this year, compared with five years ago, according to a YouGov survey for Oxfam. More than one in five people are abstaining out of concern for the environment, or their finances, the poll revealed.

That news doesn’t bode well for the round robin: that curious festive tradition in which the writer recounts the highlights of their year, and posts it to family and friends – and in some cases to anyone who ever gave them their address.

For many of us, the annual newsletter is an unwelcome Yuletide custom that sits alongside uncomfortable family gatherings, unwanted presents and over-cooked dinners. It’s a great chance to catch up on the latest news from people you barely know and hear of events you scarcely care about – often in mind-melting detail.

And for every one person who wants to read an annual exposition of job promotions and exotic vacations, overachieving children and troublesome pets, there will be many more who will feel driven to rip holly wreaths apart with their teeth.

So, could the robin (like so many turkeys this month) be for the chop?

Self-indulgence won’t win friends

The annual round-up can be a particularly bothersome piece of prose because it disobeys rule number one of good writing: it is not reader-centred.

Granted, it would be difficult to cater for every reader when the letter is going to be reproduced for every person with whom the author ever shared oxygen. But the assumption that the minutiae of the writer’s life will be endlessly fascinating to one and all makes it about the most self-indulgent kind of writing there is.

Robin sanctuary

Guardian writer Simon Hoggart is all too aware of the robin’s effect on people. For some years, he’s received hundreds of them, forwarded to him by bemused or enraged readers for whom sending on the offending letters is a form of exorcism. One accompanying note apparently read: ‘I was going to throw this away, but I thought that my wastepaper basket was too good for it.’

Hoggart is probably the foremost authority on the subject, having turned the influx he’s received into a series of books featuring the funniest, weirdest and most excruciating extracts. The collection illustrates how the letters’ tone ranges from insufferable and smug to downright peculiar and even disaster-filled, with one 2,000-word document detailing a catastrophe-laden year of never-ending medical emergencies and mishaps.

Saving graces

One upside to these unwelcome annual assaults could be the opportunity to laugh at others’ misfortunes. To quote novelist Angela Carter, ‘Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.’ There is something perversely hilarious about the unfeasibly long list of woes and calamities of a virtual stranger, combined with the fact that this person has taken the trouble to chronicle them down to the last stubbed toe.

Hoggart, noting that his batch from Christmas 2009 was a little smaller than previous years', says he would be sorry to see the demise of the robin. ‘When Christmas newsletters die, part of me will die with them,’ he says.

More likely, though, the robins will migrate to the internet. Already, 13 per cent of people polled for the Oxfam survey are planning to email their festive greetings. And if ever there was evidence that the spirit of self-importance and TMI (too much information) was alive and well, it’s in the rising tide of Facebook updates, Twitter feeds and personal blogs.

Indeed, cyberspace could already be seen as the stable wherein the newest incarnation of the round robin was born: the year-round robin (God help us).