Best conclusion ever. If I want someone to know I’m thinking about them, I’ll write them a letter.
A greeting card says “I was thinking about you while I was in Target, and I knew I’d forget about you once I got home, so I got you this greeting card as a token of my fleeting interest in your life.”
Yeah, I have to laugh at the idea of myself just scribbling something on a Post-it note and mailing it to my relatives or bf…heh. 
It’s sort of like how…sure, you could wrap a present in some old newspaper to save money, but it’s more fun and “nicer” to buy wrapping paper to do it. That’s sort of how I see a card. It’s just a way of trying to make the presentation of the sentiment nicer.
There’s a lot of passive aggressive bullshit surrounding the use of greeting cards.
Like I said, I can understand people not “getting into” cards, but this conclusion is, IMO, over-the-top. Not everybody is a letter-writer, so the smug idea that you’d go home and write somebody a letter if you really cared, vs. just sending them a card, is a bit silly and kind of judgmental. What if all you really want to say is “Hey, I’m thinking about you!”
What are you going to fill the rest of the letter with? Keep going on about how you’re thinking of them, or tell them the News Of Your Life, or…?
I keep in touch with all of my friends and I write notoriously long, funny, newsy emails about what’s going on with me…but that isn’t the same as a card and I consider one separate from the other.
I guess I’m just surprised by the level of hostility in this thread towards something as innocuous–and potentially pleasant and happy–as greeting cards.
Yeah, I’ve seen threads like this before and am always somewhat bewildered by them. There are some people who seem to think that when someone sends them a greeting card, it is some sort of act of passive-aggressive hostility, as evidenced by the people who believe that a greeting card is saying, “I don’t give enough of a crap about you to write a letter,” or “I want to create garbage in your house.”
Sheesh. Cut your friends and family a break, already. Okay, I’m sure there are some people out there who send greeting cards because they don’t give two rips about the recipient and just want to put on the appearance of caring. Fine. But there are also many people who are bad at letter-writing and would rather carefully select a greeting card that expresses some sentiment, or who simply like greeting cards and assume that the recipient would like them also. Is this really that hard to believe or understand?
Cripes.
I’ve saved every card I’ve received since I was about 8 years old. Most of them are actually handmade as opposed to storebought. It’s really not difficult to tell whether or not any thought or meaning was put behind them, based mainly on how personalised they are. I can understand not appreciating cards from people who send them only out of a sense of obligation, but the other kind never fail to make me smile.
I’m with the OP. If I send cards to people I buy blank ones and write something personal. My birthday was 2 weeks ago and as I was putting out the garbage for collection I checked my mail. There was a card from my parents. I tore open one end, tipped out the Borders gift card and threw the envelope with the card inside straight in the bin. I don’t know what the card looked like or said but I’m confident I know exactly what my mother wrote.
If people give me Christmas cards I save them until the next year, cross out the two names and reverse them and give the card back. I don’t get many repeats any more.
My whole family deeply personalizes the cards they send. Now whether or not the actual sentiment holds true once the recipient reads it, is another story. But that said, I became accustomed to expecting the same treatment from anybody who gave me one and if they didn’t do the same, well, they must not really care about me.
I felt this way until my early 20s when I was dating a painfully shy young man. He wasn’t so good at the romance thing, but he tried really hard at anything he set out to do. So when I opened my first card from him only to find his signature and “love,” I almost cried. I thought we had so much together! < wails > Upon reflection though, I understood how long he agonized over picking just the right one and once I read it again, I saw that almost everything included in the pre-packaged paralleled things specifically in our relationship.
Hell, I’d like the (few) cards I send to be accurate, but there’s no way I’d have gone through that much trouble. My conclusion? I believe that intent, like just trying to brighten someone’s day or let them know they’re missed, is what’s important.
I feel like a big old grouch for it, but I don’t like cards either. And I agree that there’s tons of passive-aggressive bullshit surrounding them. My MIL sends cards for every minute little holiday. I have no doubt we’ll get one for St. Patty’s Day, for example, with some Irish joke on it. And there are always hints dropped that we should be sending cards for these occasions too. You know, “I got a Valentine’s card from your aunt the other day. Hahaha, funny because at first, I thought maybe it was from you guys!” Dude, I’m an adult, I don’t do Valentine’s cards. And if I did, it would be for my husband.
The other problem is that I feel guilted in to keeping them. And when I get up the courage to throw some out, my husband refuses. They’re mostly to both of us, and since they’re from family, we just can’t. So in out little apartment, we have boxes of pieces of paper with “Love, Mom and Dad” written on them. Grrrr.
Uhm, hon, is that you? :eek:
I often give my husband 3 or 4 cards at a time. I still haven’t gotten over the thrill of buying a ‘for my husband’ card, even though we’ve been married for nearly 4 years, so he always gets one of those. The rest are cards that made me laugh out loud in the store. Often it’s a card that probably isn’t funny to anyone else, but it plays into an inside joke.
As for cards for others, I try to buy funny ones, even for sad times I figure everyone can use a laugh. And I like giving them for a few reasons: I tend to be a better writer than speaker, so if I have something to say, I can say it nicer in writing; I like getting mail that’s not bills and I assume that others also like it; and a lot of times I’ll be in a card store for someone else and will see a card that I know will make someone laugh - so I buy it for them on a whim.
I was with you right up until here. Why feel bad?
If people want to use a card as a receptacle for money, I’m good with that. I like money. If they want to use it to wrap a picture, it’s OK. Pictures are good.
Think of it like wrapping paper. It’s just something to make a gift more attractive. Now, if all there is is a card, then the gift was a signature. Meh. Not much of a gift, but there it is. And the gift gets thrown out with the wrapping. Oh well.
Who was being hostile? I just see sending a greeting card to be along the same lines as… giving someone a check/wad of cash/generic gift card as a gift.
Not that there aren’t perfectly acceptable times to give these kinds of gifts… but, like greeting cards, those appropriate times are very few and far between. Just my opinion.
The OP itself was hostile towards greeting cards. And your own post, implying that cards are sent so that you can skip out sending them something real, like a letter, was also IMO a bit hostile. Not towards anybody here, but towards greeting cards themselves.
My only point is that lots of people love greeting cards…just like lots of people love checks, wads of cash, and gift cards. It means you made an effort. If I don’t know what to buy you, I’ll buy you a gift card to a store you like. If I don’t know how to say what I want to say, I’ll buy you a card that says it for me.
I just don’t see how this is a bad thing.
I don’t think that my OP was hostile, and if it was I didn’t mean for it to be. My point was if you’re thinking of me, just call. If you don’t want to spend 2 minutes talking to me don’t waste your time and money with a card. If you are just using it as a way to send money, thats fine but don’t expect me to read the card. I’m not hostile towards them, I just don’t understand the point. Then again I don’t understand people who save wrapping paper either, so maybe I’m just missing the sentimental gene.
Just as a side note, I’ve personally never known anybody to save wrapping paper for sentimental reasons (although I’m not saying it doesn’t happen). I have, however, known more than a few people who saved particularly nice or uncreased wrapping paper so they could reuse it later and save some bucks.
Wow, I have never head of people who don’t like cards.
I sent my good friend a 40-Year-Old Virgin talking greeting card a few weeks ago that has the explative laced chest hair ripping audio including…“KELLY CLARKSON!”
I wrote “Go fuck a goat” inside.
It was an expression of friendship and made me laugh my ass off, and hopefully her too.
I’m a huge card sender. It never occured to me that it meant anything to anyone besides “I am thinking of you and cared enough to take time to send you this and hopefully make you smile.”