Showing posts with label greeting cards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label greeting cards. Show all posts

November 29 - Electronic Greetings Day

Posted on November 29, 2020

Do you get birthday cards in the mail?

Do you get holiday cards such as Christmas or Kwanzaa greetings? 

Do you SEND greeting cards or holiday cards to friends or loved ones? And, if you do, do you do it the slower, more expensive way - with paper cards, envelopes, and stamps, that is!?


For about a century, the mid-1800s until the mid-1990s, the
custom of sending printed greeting cards and especially Christmas cards grew and grew until multiple billions of cards are sold every year. But greeting cards - and postage - can be quite expensive, especially if you send out a lot. Even an average person sending not-all-that-posh cards to parents and cousins, grandparents and aunts and uncles, colleagues and friends, neighbors and important business contacts might have a Christmas-card list that is about 100 names long - and that could cost around $135! Which is quite a bit of money - and if that "average person" also sends birthday greetings to a substantial portion of this list, then that person is spending a lot! Every year!

Sending printed photo cards used to be REALLY expensive 


And...then there's the waste:

More than 2.5 billion Christmas cards are bought in the U.S. alone - every year! - and that makes a lot of waste to add to the waste that wrapping paper and packaging and other holiday-related activities generate. Wow! Leaving aside all the waste produced by Christmas in America, the greeting cards alone could fill a football field 10 stories high!!!


But technology can enable us to send colorful greetings with personalized messages, thoughtful letters, and personal photos or even videos very inexpensively - usually for free! - and with zero waste! And people who procrastinate can still get their greetings to their loved ones on time, because email and other electronic messaging is almost instant! Because of the convenience, speed, lack of expense and zero-waste involved in sending electronic greetings rather than paper-and-postage cards, electronics greetings are gaining in popularity!



To celebrate, just use your smart phone, tablet, laptop, or computer to craft holiday greetings! Or explore e-card companies with inexpensive or free offerings. Animated snowmen, anyone?







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September 18 - Hug a Greeting Card Writer Day

Posted on September 18, 2019

There's no attribution on most greeting cards.


In other words, no matter how clever or touching or funny the words are - and many of us choose greeting cards based on the words even more than the pictures! - we have no way of knowing the name or anything about who wrote those words!

That means that greeting card writers are the very definition of "unsung" - unacknowledged and quite possibly under-appreciated.

Some cards DO feature quotes
and DO include the writer's name!

Do you know a greeting card writer you can hug today? I don't either! And if we were pointed toward some stranger who is, in fact, a greeting card writer, surely that person would be reluctant to get hugs from total strangers? 

I think it makes more sense to think about the fact that someone writes these cards, someone invents the concept, types the words, creates the art, chooses the size and font, and so forth...

...To appreciate greeting card writers...

...And maybe to post or tweet thanks to greeting card writers in general - at least for those of us who don't know any particular greeting card writers!

A quickie history of greeting cards:

Ancient Chinese people exchanged good-will messages during their New Year celebrations, waaaaaaayyy back when. Ancient Egyptians, too, exchanged papyrus scrolls with greetings.

Paper greeting cards were made in Europe at least by 1400, when Germans were making woodcut cards for New Years. The oldest known Valentine that still exists was sent from a prisoner in the Tower of London (England) to his wife - in 1415. 

Advances in printing, of course, had a lot of impact on how common greeting cards became, with much more use and popularity from the mid-1800s to the late 1900s. Christmas cards became especially popular for a while there...

...But...

Of course online stuff has gotten in the way of all that success. Paperless is more and more popular for all sorts of things - why not birthday well-wishes, seasonal greetings, get-well messages and thank you notes? These days we can reach out on text, Facebook, or tweet with a simple greeting (emojis, colorful text and backgrounds, and other choices make these "simple" things more and more fun and personal!) - or we can send ecards - including some pretty elaborate, animated ecards!

For those messages we type ourselves - text, FB, etc. - WE'RE the greeting card writers! But all the animated ecards that actually say something still need writers to create those somethings. 

According to this infographic, 1.5 billion Christmas cards were sent in the U.S. in 2010, accounting for about 45% of all greeting cards being sent! Retail sales of all greeting cards, each year, is about $7.5 billion - and, get this, around 80 to 85% of the greeting cards purchased were bought by women!!



One of the hard things to do is to write funny messages. Check out these examples:

 







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October 5 – World Card Making Day

Posted on October 5, 2013

Back in the day, people would write letters to one another. They would wish their friends happy birthday, and congratulate them for graduating or having a new baby in the home. They would let their Uncle Joe know that they were thinking about him, and they would wish their Tia Juanita a speedy recovery from surgery.

And some of those letter-writing people would get out scraps of shelf liner or wrapping paper, bits of lace and fabric, scissors and glue, and they would create a greeting card to make their birthday / congratulations / get well wishes more memorable and colorful.

And then somebody, somewhere, during the heyday of the boom of inexpensive printing in the mid-1800s, had the brilliant idea of printing up commercially made greeting cards. “We'll make some money, for sure,” I can just picture them saying to themselves. And so the greeting card industry was born.


These days there are e-cards and texted or social media greetings and well-wishes, which means fewer printed-paper cards, and even the once-popular Christmas card is diminishing in popularity. However, there is something extra satisfying for many people in getting a card in the mail or delivered in-person. Something that they can hold in their hands, display on their wall or mantle or desk, show off to others, keep for future enjoyment.

But—and it's a pretty big but—many greeting cards are now the price of a small gift. Does it make sense to buy a greeting card for $5 to $9? Wouldn't your friend or loved one rather have a slightly better quality paint set, or a slightly bigger toy car—along with a homemade card?

This is a cute sort of card
to make -- get the
instructions here.
Most people appreciate homemade cards more than store-bought cards, anyway. So get creative today, get crafty, and make your own greeting cards.

You might even consider entering this contest. (Hurry – entries must be postmarked October 15!)



Resources for greeting card ideas:

Here is an article explaining just why greeting cards are so darned expensive.


Also on this date:
























Plan Ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for October holidays, October birthdays, and historical anniversaries in October.

And here are my Pinterest boards for November holidays, November birthdays, and historical anniversaries in November.



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