End Greeting Card Tyranny Now!!!

[Cindysphinx]

I'll come right out and say it: I don't like greeting cards.

I don't appreciate receiving them. All it means is that the sender went to the drug store, looked around, spent $3.95, wrote their name at the bottom of some mass-produced canned message, and mailed it to me. Or maybe they bought the greeting cards in bulk and send the same card to everyone. It feels so commercial, so canned, so impersonal, so unnecessary. It is also environmentally unfriendly when you consider the manufacture of the card itself and the resources devoted to delivering it to me. A phone call, in comparison, is much more environmentally friendly.

But what really gets me is that a lot of people like greeting cards. They expect them. If you don't send one, they take it badly, even if you called them on Their Special Day and talked with them for 30 minutes. So I wind up trudging to the drugstore and engaging in this pointless ritual. Couldn't I donate the $3.95 to charity and instead pick up the phone and have a nice conversation with the birthday girl instead?

Worse is Greeting Card Creep. It is not enough on Mother's Day for me to send a card to my mother. No, now I have to send one to my mother-in-law and all female siblings and sisters-in-law. Same thing on Valentine's Day.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

Cindy -- who tosses Christmas cards directly into the trash after she opens them because she doesn't like the clutter

[Steady Eddy]

I feel like you. Fortunately, my wife feels the same way. We honor our own calender of days: the day we met, when adopted out dog, and so on. We don't honor days like Valentine's Day that only exist because of the greeting card industry.

I'm not completely consistent with this, though. My father thinks Father's Day is dumb. He doesn't want cards on Father's Day. But I buy him one anyway because I'm afraid of offending him. Do you see how I feel?

But I'm with you. I don't like how people pass out cards on birthdays and expect to be congratulated for their wit, just by buying someone else's. Almost anything is more personal than handing out a greeting card.

[SuperFly]

Greeting cards: helping people look like they give a rat's *** since the mid 1800's.

[Sentinel]

Why not hand-make some cards and send them to friends ?

In India, we have cards made by CRY (child relief and you) so the money goes to charity. But i agree, better to donate that amount. My folks used to spend a lot of time keeping track of who sent cards last year, and who sent them this year, who only sends return cards etc etc....

[GetBetterer]

I've had a few friends send me home-made greeting cards (which in my opinion was thoughtful) alongside some people who wrote their own little letter in store bought greeting cards which I thought was also nice.

[r2473]

It's a chick thing.

To say it makes no sense and is a waste of time and money would just be redundent (obviously).

[jswinf]

I'm sort of shocked; I thought women were the bastions of the greeting-card industry. Don't you have any special ones tucked away, maybe with a pressed flower, or are you just a heartless jock like us guys?

I do agree about the card "creep." Cards for everything now. And what I HATE are the semi-new noisy ones, that when you open them up they play music or yap at you? Always makes me jump.

[Cindysphinx]

Originally Posted by jswinf

I'm sort of shocked; I thought women were the bastions of the greeting-card industry. Don't you have any special ones tucked away, maybe with a pressed flower, or are you just a heartless jock like us guys?

I do agree about the card "creep." Cards for everything now. And what I HATE are the semi-new noisy ones, that when you open them up they play music or yap at you? Always makes me jump.

I had a friend who was into art and had developed a line of whimsical cartoon characters. She was thinking of developing the characters into greeting cards.

She had a consultant who used to work for Hallmark, and I was able to hear some of what the greeting card consultant had to say. The consultant got a bunch of this lady's friends together, and we were to be a sounding board/focus group for the concept.

What blew me away was that the consultant said that most women spend a bunch of time (I can't remember how much -- 10 minutes?) selecting each greeting card they send.

What the what? Ten minutes? I consider it a personal goal to spend less than ten seconds.

SteadyEddy, I too prefer to celebrate dates/events that have personal meaning. Better still, I like to do nice things for people out of the clear blue. I read a book that a family member might enjoy and I just up and send them a copy. I see a shirt that would look great on my sister; I buy one for her. Why do we have to do these things on Madison Avenue's schedule?

[Cindysphinx]

Originally Posted by jswinf

I'm sort of shocked; I thought women were the bastions of the greeting-card industry. Don't you have any special ones tucked away, maybe with a pressed flower, or are you just a heartless jock like us guys?

I do agree about the card "creep." Cards for everything now. And what I HATE are the semi-new noisy ones, that when you open them up they play music or yap at you? Always makes me jump.

I have saved exactly zero manufactured greeting cards.

I have one plastic bin in the basement that holds special little treasures my kids have made over the years. There are probably some hand-made Mothers' Day Cards in there. And I have a lot of my kids' framed art work all over the house.

On account of how it is free, and real art is very expensive.

[sureshs]

www.evite.com

[Steady Eddy]

Originally Posted by Cindysphinx

What blew me away was that the consultant said that most women spend a bunch of time (I can't remember how much -- 10 minutes?) selecting each greeting card they send.

What the what? Ten minutes? I consider it a personal goal to spend less than ten seconds.

Good for you, but it takes me a long time to find a card. Here's why. I don't want to send someone a birthday card that makes fun of their age. I don't want a long poem. I also don't want one that's for a 5 year old. So I look for a long time, I think I'm not picky, but so many cards are totally inappropriate! Finally I find something, and I'm upset over all the time it took me just to pick out a card. In another week I'll have to pick out like 5 more cards. For what it's worth, it adds up a quite a drain on time and money.

Greeting card people. Don't make so many birthday cards that try to be "ha ha" clever. Just "Happy Birthday" with a cute cartoon or photo is enough! That's all ya gotta do.

[Cindysphinx]

I walk up to the section that says, "Birthday -- Mother." I pick up the very first card that appears to have an envelope of the correct size behind it. I scan quickly for the word, "Mother." If these requirements are met, I buy it. I do not read it. Since I feel no attachment to the treacle written inside, this card will do nicely.

I would look at the price and choose on that basis, but that would require me to pull my reading glasses out of my purse.

I would also like to suggest we all do away with the oversized card that we require everyone the person knows to sign. Do we really have to track down every member of the tennis team and have her write something on the card, or can one person just scribble, "From your teammates" at the bottom.

I never know what to write on the Oversize Group Card and have been known to steal the witty greetings of others who have signed before me. Hey, the recipient won't know who the original author of "Thanks for everything!" was, will she?

Cindy -- who might send her mom a birthday card for a 5-year-old just to see if she says anything about it; maybe mom doesn't read them either

[jswinf]

^^^Be careful--like Eddy says, "modern" cards might say something on the inside like: "On your birthday, why not party all night with the Chippendale Dancers and guzzle tequila 'till your toes get numb. Just lay off the bean dip, you know how you get."

[Cindysphinx]

What's wrong with that? The recipient of the greeting card should be glad they are getting anything at all!

[Polaris]

Originally Posted by Cindysphinx

I'll come right out and say it: I don't like greeting cards.

I don't appreciate receiving them. All it means is that the sender went to the drug store, looked around, spent $3.95, wrote their name at the bottom of some mass-produced canned message, and mailed it to me. Or maybe they bought the greeting cards in bulk and send the same card to everyone. It feels so commercial, so canned, so impersonal, so unnecessary.

I'm guessing that you feel this way because you have seen too many canned run-of-the-mill cards. I couldn't disagree more. I like to spend time looking for cards in uncommon places - independent bookstores, national park visitor centers. I also like to put my own words in them (like they are small letters) and make my own cards. And fortunately, I have received cards that are genuinely beautiful and the cards themselves are so uncommon (sometimes personally prepared) that you know that the person spent a lot of time thinking about what words and pictures would say it just right.

I'm with you on the stupid by-the-numbers cards. But, don't tarnish greeting cards as a whole. There are really good ones. You just might not have received any good ones in a while. Or, some of the ones you trashed without looking, might have been really good and heartfelt .

It is also environmentally unfriendly when you consider the manufacture of the card itself and the resources devoted to delivering it to me. A phone call, in comparison, is much more environmentally friendly.

There are places where you can buy cards prepared by children who live in orphanages, or by people who work in some cottage industry. You pay more for the cards, so the money actually goes to charity. Yes, a phone call is environmentally friendly, but you burn a lot more of nature's resources by driving a car than by sending a greeting card.

But what really gets me is that a lot of people like greeting cards. They expect them. If you don't send one, they take it badly, even if you called them on Their Special Day and talked with them for 30 minutes. So I wind up trudging to the drugstore and engaging in this pointless ritual. Couldn't I donate the $3.95 to charity and instead pick up the phone and have a nice conversation with the birthday girl instead?

I agree with you there. It is childish to expect to receive a card, or any gift for that matter. Also, sending cards on holidays is a drag. Birthday's are fine, but in general, there ought not to be an explicit festive occasion in order to send a card. One sends a card to person X, because one happens to be thinking about person X at any given time. At least, that's how I think about it.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

Apparently not, from the looks of this thread. But yeah, I do think that you are a little too extreme about greeting cards. Sometimes, I receive a personally written card, or one with a picture or a quote that hints at some shared personal moment from the past. In today's world, these antiquated things are precious, worth treasuring and worth giving to others. It's like writing or receiving a letter. How many people receive handwritten letters nowadays? And how beautiful it would be to know that (a) someone cared enough to sit down and write one to you (b) you care enough to sit down and write one for somebody !

I walk up to the section that says, "Birthday -- Mother." I pick up the very first card that appears to have an envelope of the correct size behind it. I scan quickly for the word, "Mother." If these requirements are met, I buy it. I do not read it. Since I feel no attachment to the treacle written inside, this card will do nicely.

If I feel that way about buying a card, then I don't buy it. I'm past keeping up appearances. Only a few people in our lives deserve personal, beautiful, uncommon cards. For the rest, a timely phone call or an email or a stupidly funny egreeting will do.

[Cindysphinx]

Hmmm. Well . . . Yes, I sometimes receive cards that look very expensive or pretty. I'm afraid these get the very same treatment as the most generic drug store greeting card. A quick read if the card has a handwritten message in it, and then off to the recycle bin.

There is a reason for this, and it is not dependent on the amount spent on the card or how pretty it is.

I'm reading a non-fiction book right now called "Stuff." It is a book about hoarding. One of the interesting things I learned is that people who hoard save things for a variety of reasons, but the overriding theme seems to be that they attach a lot of emotion to things. They also use things to store their memories, in a way. We all do this to a certain extent, I suppose.

On the continuum of hoarding behavior, I score pretty low. Few things carry intense emotional meaning for me. And of those things, greeting cards come in dead last or close to it.

After all, the greeting card is almost never made by the person sending it. This sets it apart from things my kids made when they were little, for example. It is, no matter how beautiful or unique, something made by a stranger and purchased from a store for a price that is often indicated on the back. What matters is the sentiment, which could just as easily be expressed on a plain sheet of paper, and in a greeting card is also mass-produced.

I think maybe the popularity of greeting cards is due to the way it makes people feel when they buy and send them. I guess this makes sense on some level -- if folks enjoy looking for the perfect greeting card, then that's what they enjoy. The senders of cards perhaps do not fully understand that the recipient may not feel similarly, but the recipients are much too polite to tell the senders this. And so the cycle continues.

But consider it from my end. I go to the mailbox every day, and it is absolutely stuffed with bills and junk mail. I have to go through it daily and pull out the bills. And then there is a greeting card. I stand there over the recycle bin, read it and . . . . then what? Am I supposed to save it? For how long? Where? Into the bin it goes.

I would rather have talked to the person, honestly.

[tennytive]

As a photographer I made my own cards for years for all occasions. People looked forward to them. It was a lot of work, but I enjoyed it. Now I do so occasionally, but email it instead of printing it and sending it in an envelope. Postage figures in these days as another negative to sending cards.

Lately I've been buying blank cards from Trader Joe's. Beautiful photographs, no sappy greetings, and 99 cents. Easy and more personal to write in whatever greeting suits the occasion. Almost all of my friends receive a call and usually an email instead of a card on their birthdays, but I still buy cards for the immediate family.

As for you, I understand your position, and kudos for realizing that less is more. People save too much junk to the point of letting it take over their lives.

[retlod]

Sympathy cards for people who we don't know that well are a great use of paper. At a time when unobtrusive communication is probably welcome, I would imagine a little note to let you know that people are thinking of you would go a long way. My group will send a card when a child we have taken care of in the hospital before dies.

[angharad]

I don't mind a greeting card when it's obvious the person took some time with it - writing a longer letter-length note, making it themselves, etc. The people that mass-purchase cards and send them to everyone for every occasion drive me nuts, though.

[Cindysphinx]

Originally Posted by retlod

Sympathy cards for people who we don't know that well are a great use of paper. At a time when unobtrusive communication is probably welcome, I would imagine a little note to let you know that people are thinking of you would go a long way. My group will send a card when a child we have taken care of in the hospital before dies.

When my dog died, my vet sent me a handwritten note. It was on a blank piece of paper, or maybe it was his office stationery. It said just a few words about the loss. I guess I was also a bit surprised and appreciative that he would write to his clients in this way. I was certainly left feeling like I would use his services again.

So it's nice that you guys send something to the parents of a child who died.

I, uh. . . I didn't save the vet's note though.

Cindy -- who feels a little bit bad for slam dunking into the trash Christmas cards with a family photo on them, but really, how can she possibly start saving the family photos of other people's families?