Sending Handwritten Greeting Cards: A Declining Trend?

by Jyl Johnson Pattee on October 17th, 2012 | 1 Comment »

I'm all about social media and connecting online. I love keeping up to date with my family and friends through Facebook updates; posting, commenting, and viewing pictures on Instagram; sharing bite-sized conversations on Twitter; and seeing my loved ones' loves via Pinterest.

While I love connecting online, I am in love with companies large and small from etsy to Hallmark who still make it possible to capture a handwritten greeting.

In other words, the secret is out ... I'm a huge fan of my mail box and the memories that can be made using it.

In a previous post, I wrote about how I wanted to work at Hallmark when I grew up. Was it because I loved writing pithy greeting cards? Or because I was a phenomenal illustrator? No! I was passionate about buying, writing, sending, and receiving messages that perfectly captured and enhanced some of life's most meaningful moments.

For example...

My cousin Kim and I are soul mates. I don't know if that became more apparent to us than when we spent a summer together in England. I was 15 and she was 13. We rode the tube into the city every day, talking to each other in British accents as if no one could tell we weren't from England. We talked about our time at boarding school and our rich parents and our travels around the world and our plans for when we grew up. Nothing but the latter was true, but we were creative and made up great stories that all the other people on the train would have loved had they been able to understand us.

While in England, we saw The Breakfast Club, count them, eight times in.the.theater! Did we go to Buckingham Palace? No! Did we see the crowned jewels? Not a chance! Did we go to art museums or Kensington Palace or walk along the Thymes? Of course not! We were too busy watching Claire and Bender fight it out in detention. We followed each show with a stop at Baskin Robbins, because you can't get that in the US. LOL!

What does a summer vacation, teenagers, and the Breakfast Club have to do with greeting cards? This...

At the Blissdom Conference in February, I visited Hallmark's suite, which was more or less a pop-up shop with cards of all kinds. They took care of the sending; you just had to do the writing and provide an address. I had died and gone to heaven. At least I thought so until I saw this card.

The front...

...and the back...

How did that greeting card writer know me and Kim? Oh! My! Gosh! Someone understood our accents! He/she was on one of our tube rides or saw us trying on clothes in Top Shop. Or maybe ... maybe the Hallmark greeting card writers are just that good and know how to design cards and write them in a way that perfectly captures moments that are meaningful ... moments that, when shared, will elicit responses like this...

Whether it's sending a card to my cousin, gifts at Christmas, or boxes to my boys at summer camp, there is magic in sending and receiving mail.

What do you think? Is sending and receiving cards and gifts a lost art, a declining trend?

What is your favorite thing to send or receive in the mail? What do you love about it?

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Jyl Johnson Pattee

An active part of the Mom It Forward team, Jyl primarily writes about parenting, social good, and all things travel related. In a past life, Jyl was an award-winning copywriter and designer of corporate training programs for Fortune 100 companies. Offline, Jyl is married to @TroyPattee; a mom to two teen boys and a beagle named #Hashtag; loves large amounts of cheese, dancing, and traveling; and lives in the beautiful Rocky Mountains. Topping her bucket list is the goal to visit 50 countries by the time she's 50.