Greeting Cards – A Great Way of Conveying Best Wishes but Now Sadly a Diminishing Trend

 When we millennials were growing up, greeting cards were a common trend. Book shops used to be lined up with a variety of greeting cards with all types of wishes printed on them. You could find a variety of designs for all types of occasions. There were many designs of birthday cards, new year cards, Christmas cards, and many others. The best thing about these cards were new designs kept coming to the market.  

The recipients would keep these cards for a long time to preserve the memories. Back when I was five or six, getting four to five cards on my birthday was a normal thing. I was not good at keeping them. Otherwise, I would have many of them even today. My aunt used to have at least a foot-high stack of cards she received over the years. 

 

Now, the trend of exchanging greeting cards has greatly been replaced by sending best wishes over phone apps and emails. Their advantage is that you do not have to mail or give them to the recipients like greeting cards. You can simply type a message or an email and press that send button.

 An email may give the recipients momentary happiness, but messages and emails can get deleted, never to be found again. Even if you do not delete them, they can get so old in your inbox that you probably won’t find them again. So, the whole thing about having such memories through cards seems left out. 

 

Current Status of Greeting cards 

There are still some brands that are selling greeting cards and vendors who are offering custom wholesale greeting card printing services. But the number of buyers has decreased a lot. Now the customers are usually middle-aged people or old-fashioned millennials like me. 

However, the feelings shared through these cards are still there. They are given with a smile and received with one as well. 

 

Even though it is hard to find greeting cards today compared to before, many people would still go to gift shops and book shops to find the right greeting card. There are still some brands that are selling these cards for all these events. The fan following of these greeting cards among some people is still solid. I refer to them as cultured people who have not forgotten this amazing trend. 

But a sad fact is that the trend is almost non-existent among young people, especially Gen Z. Me and some other millennials who cherish making events more memorable with these cards may be the generation to buy greeting cards. In the coming years, the trend might just die out. Hopefully, that is just an assumption, and things will turn out differently. 

When the trend of e-books came, many people thought that traditional books will become a thing of the past. Yet, the number of books sold everywhere outnumbers the total sales of e-books by a lot. It can be the best-case scenario for greeting cards as well.

During the pandemic situation that is still present at the time of writing this article, people were involved in many DIY activities. A lot of people were making banana bread and trying out other activities. Some kids I know, on the other hand, were making good use of their art supplies by making greeting cards for their families and friends. 

Many of those cards were actually amazing and worth saving. Seeing them getting involved in these activities of making cards actually gives hope that the trend of greeting cards may return to its original glory in the upcoming years, but it is too early to say anything. At the moment, this glorious trend is decreasing. Hopefully, things will come out to be different in the future.