What prompts this: last weekend, I helped a friend move her father to assisted care living. Maybe 20 of us helped. She emailed requesting my snail mail address so she could send a thank you card. I replied, “I appreciate the thought but don’t think it necessary. But if you must…” 20 people, her postage alone will be 8. I don't know what sort of cards () she’ll send, but the tree didn’t need to die on my account.
I should have posted this back around Christmas, when zillions of cards fly. I receive them, sometimes with just a signature, and while I appreciate that the person thought of me, an email would have done just as well. No pollution from the mail truck, no landfill issues when I throw it away after a couple weeks… I’ve been accused of sentimentalism and pack rat-ism on more than one occasion but greeting cards don’t do it for me.
Anybody else wish we could do away with most if not all greeting cards?
I don’t send many greeting cards, but I like them. I send some for birthdays, and one couple and I have a running gag on sending silly St. Patrick’s Day cards.
I send a lot at Christmas though, to try and keep in at least minimal touch with people who don’t live near me anymore. The cards I send are religious, no Santas or reindeer.
Thank you cards are, to me, a gracious gesture. I once sent $20 to a struggling family in Lansing Michigan, when I lived there. A local radio station published their address, after the young father, working nights and going to school days, was murdered by a robber. I didn’t expect a reply, but I got a nice little card with a handwritten reply, from the family, about a month later.
I agree that it’s a gracious gesture. I’m certainly not insulted by them or anything. And if a handwritten reply accompanies it, so much the better—but then, written on a plain piece of paper would have done as well for me.
Right, cards can be quite expensive. My mom is fanatic about these things and, coming from an earlier era, I understand the “low-tech (snail mail), less-informed (about possible global warming, for instance)” approach. But it seems like the point is, “I took the time to think about you, compose a few thoughts, and send you a card.” An e-card works just as well for that purpose.
See, I don’t really think so. To me it’s kinda like an email vs a letter. Yeah, you can say the same things in an email as you can in a handwritten letter, but a handwritten letter (and card) not only took you more time to complete, but you actually had to take effort into sending it out. That makes it seem all the much more touching.
I agree with the last bit but I think the pre-printed cards are just as much a convenience for the sender as a nicety for the recipient. Not everyone keeps stationary around the house, for your average busy working person it may be worth $3 at Walgreens to scratch one item off the TODO list during lunch-break. For your friend whose dad moved, I’m sure it was worth $8 in postage plus $10 for a set of cards to know she had covered all the bases with thanking everyone.
And the nice note inside the card takes care of some of the letter writing. Yeah it would be more meaningful if they wrote from the heart, but some people would rather wait in line at Walgreens than sit in a quiet room with a pen and a blank piece of paper. Again, convenience for the sender.
I hate e-cards. Every time someone’s sent me one, I seem to get on a spammer’s list. Or several lists. Also, if I send an e-card, I can’t enclose a feather or use a rubber stamp on the card.
I like to hold the cards, and re-read them, and touch them, and then cut them up and re-use them in decoupages and the like.
I think greeting cards are much more personal than an e-card. That being said, I always feel terrible throwing them away. I still have birthday card from when I turned 8, because I feel bad getting rid of them.
I like to send greeting cards, especially thank you cards. It’s like I actually spent the time to write this, thats how thankful I am. Or it could just be that I like to write my name a lot.
I send Christmas cards, birthday cards and sympathy cards.
I also like getting cards.
I hate e-cards; most of them crappy graphics or else the Jackie Lawson one-trick pony Flash animation that seems to get slower and slower as the years go by - or maybe I just find them more tedious over the years.
Actually, I prefer a nice long email with some real info, some real feelings and perhaps some insight into how someone is really doing. Sort of like real letters from days gone by…
I almost never send them. I appreciate the thought when I receive one, but into the trash it goes unless it has a deep meaning or a cute picture of one of my nieces.
Count me in the likes sending / receiving them camp. I truly enjoy getting personal mail (a rarity in this day and age). I also enjoy making and sending personal greetings.
Perhaps it was your friend’s father who wanted to send the thank you notes. I am assuming that he would be of my parents’ generation. I know that my mom and dad are not online and have no plans to be…thus everything is snail mail.
I like getting them (like missred I always enjoy getting non-junk mail), but at the same time, they usually go right into the trash. An email is just as fine.
Don’t even get me started on Christmas cards. The majority I receive aren’t even signed. They’re just photo cards. I don’t see the point of sending these if you can’t personalize them even a little.
I’m with the OP. I’d much rather get a phone call or an email. A phone call feels more personal and actually gives me a chance to connect, and an email makes it easy for me to respond. If I receive an email thanking me for something, I can type up, “it was my pleasure, and don’t hesitate to ask for help again” or the like and hit “send.” What am I supposed to do, send another card to express that sentiment?
I do approve of cards as a way to personalize a money gift, however. If I give someone a check as a gift, I think a card is an appropriate way to deliver it (rather than just handing over the check) and give my well-wishes. It confounds me when I receive a material gift and a card from someone in person, though. Why spend an extra $3 to put a card on a gift that you’re handing to me? A material gift doesn’t need a delivery mechanism, and anything you want to say to me, you can say! “Happy Birthday” isn’t so personal it needs a special card to say it again. This custom seems to me to be from another generation–a generation that was told by the card companies that a gift must be accompanied by a card to be proper. I hope that our generation can put to rest some of the more outdated rules of ettiquette, especially those involving communication. Communication has evolved so greatly that it’s time to re-evaluate the rules of what’s proper.
No, eventually you have to get up and go somewhere.
I don’t think this is what you mean? but that would be kind of cool–send the same card back and forth and keep adding notes.
I do write thank-you notes and thank-you cards because I think it’s important and takes more effort than an email. And around Christmas, I like to decorate with the cards I get.
I think they’re overly expensive, but I don’t mind giving them out. Seems sort of silly but I do get a small amount of pleasure finding a card that is suitable/humorous for the recipient. I usually wind up giving goofy cards with a monkey or ostrich on them to my family members.
I hate sending greeting cards, mostly because they are so expensive (5 dollars! for paper! AAaaaagh!) but I do it anyway because people like my Mom and MIL like them. Normally, if I have something to say, it goes out over email. If I need to send someone a cheque or a handwritten thank you, I’ve got still got a box of paper and envelopes left from my wedding.
I like to get snail mail that is neither junk nor bills, and often keep thank-you notes people send me. A greeting card might send a few days on the mantle, but if there’s no more message than a signature it eventually gets recycled.
My wife and I are pretty much opposed to greeting cards in general. A very few family members still get them from time to time – people without e-mail accounts. Other than that, we consider it a waste of paper and money. Also, since fucking Hallmark started leaving their Christmas displays up year round, we have both vowed to boycott them until the end of time – we have a low tolerance for having their stupid promotional crap constantly shoved down our throats. Likewise any artificially created card-giving days – a thinly disguised ploy to grab a few extra bucks from unwary consumers. The whole industry just makes me angry and I choose not to give them my money.
I hate cards for Christmas and other major holidays. Like SaharaTea said, those types of cards aren’t even personal anymore.
I enjoy sending thank-you cards and especially “just because” cards. I spend a lot of time finding the perfect one and writing a nice note. I hope that they’re a surprise to recipient, something to brighten their day.
I gather it was/is a mutual feeling. I don’t know if they’re each sending a card or senting a “joint” thank you. FWIW I think he’s 97. He survived about five concentration camps in WWII.
Actually I prefer the photo cards. At least there’s an update of how everybody has grown and changed from year to year.
I find my stance softening. Perhaps, being dopers (i.e. verbally expressive) I’m (we’re?) too hard on those who have a hard time expressing themselves? Like some can bake an uber tasty birthday cake, but should we fault those who buy a nice cake because they lack the culinary skill? Card buyers may feel they lack the expressiveness but want to make the gesture.
I’ll admit, once in a blue moon I’ll stumble across a card that is sooo well suited to someone that it’s as if the card were made for that person I’m thinking of.
Yeah, in all fairness, those are sometimes cool. At least you know the person spent some time picking it out.
A card that I really liked (and have since lost, I’m sure) came in the form of a Christmas card. The couple were quite artistic and they actually made the paper and the envelopes. The paper incorporated actual flower petals. Each had a brief, handwritten, personal wish.
Maybe the history of how cards got popular was related to how valuable and rare paper used to be? Wasn’t there something in The Good Earth that Wan Lung bought some red paper to decorate his shrine, thus honoring his ancestors? Maybe I read it wrong but paper seemed as a precious commodity. Now we’ve got megatonnage of the stuff.
Some doper will correct me if I’m wrong but I seem to recall that in the early days of mail delivery, the recipient actually paid the postage. Maybe it was like, “Hey, I paid for the paper so it must be important—the least you can do is pay for mailing it.”
