My teenage daughter loves getting lots of presents for her birthday and Christmas … so she can make a whole slew of really cool thank-you cards.
Didn’t see that last part coming, did you?
I think she might actually like making the cards more than she likes getting the gifts. Some of them get the Puffy Paint treatment. Some are cut and folded. Others are hand-drawn with pencil or pen-and-ink. Some of them are pages and pages long. They often are themed to the gift received, and they always make the day of whomever she sends them to.
Her mother and I taught her to be grateful for gifts, to say thanks, to write notes. But she’s far surpassed our expectations on the subject. Certainly far surpassed our motivation when it comes to our own thank-yous.
She does the same thing for Christmas cards and birthday cards and Father’s Day cards, for the record. And the practice of making—or even sending cards—is a relational art that’s rapidly losing ground these days. I wish it weren’t, but it is. Here’s a stat-filled Culture Clip we published yesterday about all things card related, from well-wishings to holidays to thank-yous:
According to the U.S. Postal Service, greeting card mailings dropped by 24% between 2002 and 2010, and they’re still declining. Market research firm IBISWorld reported that the sale of traditional cards fell by 60% over the last decade. And American Greetings, the No. 2 paper card maker in the country, reports that its stock is worth 65% less than it was in 1998. The company told The Wall Street Journal that it still had millions of American customers, but “the average customer is in their 40s.”
You can just jot a quick note on your friend’s Facebook page to say thanks or happy birthday, right? You don’t even have to remember when somebody’s birthday is anymore; FB dutifully reminds you. And that’s exactly my point. The care and the thought and the love of creating (or even buying) your own card has been replaced by a digital dragnet of sorts, pulling all of our various sentiments into one big pile and then dispersing it evenly among all the deserving.
Except it just doesn’t mean as much, does it?
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