A Million Thanks

     Acceptable manners have changed a lot in my lifetime. My Grandpa never went out in public without his straw fedora hat. Conversely, he never wore one inside the house. Now men wear hats everywhere. Even my 92 year old Dad now leaves his cap on in restaurants. The men of my household leave their hats on during dinner, although the spare sons who lived with us didn't. But for them, eating at a dinner table was a rare and almost sacred experience. When the woman cutting my son's hair asked how he styled it, he said, "With a hat." When she asked how he wore it with his hat off, he said, "I'm asleep. It doesn't matter." From the old TV shows I have watched women, too, wore hats in public, but keeping them on inside, even/especially in church was good manners. There are a few churches that still require women to wear head coverings although the cultural significance these had in Biblical times has been unknown for centuries in the U.S. And it is still etiquette in England to wear hats for formal occasions like weddings. Hat rental shops still hold sway in the U.K.
     But this post is not about hats. It is about how acceptable manners have changed, except in the area mentioned in the title--Thanks. The lone hold out against the evolving etiquette of our time is the humble thank you note. Even though we can now communicate by phone, text and email, it seems the only acceptable way to thank someone for a gift or service must involve a piece of paper and a stamp. Hipster households might be hard pressed to locate a stamp much less know where it goes on an envelope. Why have polite requirements for showing gratitude remained stationery? I don't know, but our local paper's advice column has complaint letters almost weekly from disgruntled "thank-less" givers. Don't get me wrong, gratitude is important, it is the expectation that everyone must do it the same way they did in Napolean's time that gets under my skin. Why can't the same people who insist we address both members of gay couples as husbands and lesbian couples as wives, get over snail mail? Is the USPS secretly bribing the manners police?  The fact that manner's guru Emily's last name was "Post" would be more than enough evidence of collusion to impeach her if she had ever become president . . . and was not deceased.
     So I guess this is my complaint letter about complaint letters--politeness is not measured by postage. If there are a million things to be thankful for, perhaps courtesy can condone more than one way to express it.