It was my brothers 32nd birthday last weekend and while i was looking at greeting cards for his birthday I got into reading random greeting cards and relating them to how we view people in our culture. Has anyone else ever found a lot of cultural “messeges” in birthday cards? I found quite a few cards to convey a lot about our cultures attitude toward gender, age, expectations, etc. It made me thinking, are men and women suppose to feel differently? What are the important things in a mans life as compared to a womens or a childs?
Well, I needed to get a birthday card for my husband’s grandmother, and I had a terrible time. I wanted something dignified, not humerous and certainly and not infantile with teddy bears and cartoony balloons. Of the grown-up-looking cards, the majority were overly fawning, like “You are one of the most special women I have ever known. I admire your courage, your sensitivity, your blah blah blah.” She is in poor health, and there were a surprising number of “Have a happy birthday and great year” things that would be, uh, forced optimism, shall we say. (I never noticed that until I had to shop for someone near death.) And of course there were the God ones, which are Right Out.
I just wanted something with a photograph of soft-focus flowers or something that said “Have a wonderful birthday,” or a similar reserved sentiment. I ended up getting one with handrawn, somewhat cartoony flowers in a flower pot that said, “For a very special Grandmother, Happy Birthday.”
Maybe I was just looking at the wrong store. Or maybe I’m bucking the trend by wanting to send a fairly impersonal, dignified greeting in an increasingly familiar and casual world.
The obvious answer is to do it the old-fashioned way, the way Miss Manners would suggest: Buy some pretty note paper or note cards. Write what you want to say, in your own hand.
-
Thank you’s (professional or not too personal), expressions of sympathy, answers to invitations: Plain off-white informal foldover notes w/ envelopes
-
Thank you’s (more personal), correspondance to relatives and friends: Personalized snazzier stuff
*Greeting card stuff (birthdays, holidays):
It depends:
For relatives and friends I like ridiculous crude goofy cards… the more surreal and gross, the better.
For people I don’t know or like as well: Blank cards with something pleasant on the outside… In this case I usually use cards that charities send you when you donate.
For older relatives and thank you cards I buy blank cards with pretty pictures (Monet’s “Waterlilies”, a photo of a flower, something like that) and write my own messages in them.
For my friends and things like Valentines, I’ll put a lot of effort into finding the right card…but it’s not one with a stupid poem on the inside. I like funny comments or jazzy pictures on the outside, and blank insides.
Generally though, I agree that the cards do tend to send out strong sterotyped cultural messages. but, hey, they can’t actually make a card to suit everyone, so they make a card that won’t offend the majority, and that others can use ironically. I have a friend who bought her girlfriend a “for the little woman” flowery birthday card, I think the pair of them spent the whole day laughing about it.
I was thinking of doing that, but, believe it or not, some people in my family have commented that, while they’d never hold it against the giver, of course, they thought that handwritten cards were the cheap-and-easy way out. Blank cards are less expensive ($4.00 greeting cards! WTH!), and if you have a stock of them at home, you don’t have to drive to the store and spend time hunting through the greeting cards to find the right one. I’m sure that some of my family would find the a blank card with a personal note touching, though. They’re not all Hallmark-hypnotized drones.
My New Year’s Resolution this year was to send out birthday cards and anniversary cards, which I have been shamefully lax about in the past. A fter three months of searching through all those lame, tacky, and stupid cards I’ve pretty much have enough of that. It’s not like I don’t have a good selection of blank cards that I already use for thank-you’s and other quick notes.
wiscmilk, something to consider is that greeting cards are sent predominantly by women, so most of the messages in them are pre-selected to be those that are appealing to, and meaningful, for women.