I know the general etiquette for thank you cards and follow it. However I do have a question about what you do for birthdays and Christmas. In general our family does smaller birthday parties with mainly immediate family members. Christmas we only exchange gifts between the kids and not the adults.
While gifts are never required, they are appreciated and we always make sure to sincerely thank the gift giver but that doesn't always come in the form of a thank you card for those two occasions. In fact, in my experience with both sides of our family I have only ever had one person send a thank you card for birthday gifts or Christmas and it actually surprised me to get one. I guess I feel like thank you cards are more formal and aren't used for close family, although I suppose they are nice. So this is my long winded way of saying do I (and the rest of our family I suppose minus said example) have bad manners for thinking this or do others feel the same?
Re: S/O Thank You cards
We don't send thank yous for gifts opened in the presense of the giver.
My bridal shower was and baby shower will be exceptions. I wish I could just thank the givers at those occassions too, but that would be much against Miss Manners!