September 18 - Hug a Greeting Card Writer Day

nPosted on September 18, 2019

nThere’s no attribution on most greeting cards.

nIn other words, no matter how clever or touching or funny the words are – and many of us choose greeting cards based on the words even more than the pictures! – we have no way of knowing the name or anything about who wrote those words!

nThat means that greeting card writers are the very definition of “unsung” – unacknowledged and quite possibly under-appreciated.

Some cards DO feature quotes
and DO include the writer’s name!

Do you know a greeting card writer you can hug today? I don’t either! And if we were pointed toward some stranger who is, in fact, a greeting card writer, surely that person would be reluctant to get hugs from total strangers?

nI think it makes more sense to think about the fact that someone writes these cards, someone invents the concept, types the words, creates the art, chooses the size and font, and so forth…

n…To appreciate greeting card writers…

n…And maybe to post or tweet thanks to greeting card writers in general – at least for those of us who don’t know any particular greeting card writers!

nA quickie history of greeting cards:

nAncient Chinese people exchanged good-will messages during their New Year celebrations, waaaaaaayyy back when. Ancient Egyptians, too, exchanged papyrus scrolls with greetings.

nPaper greeting cards were made in Europe at least by 1400, when Germans were making woodcut cards for New Years. The oldest known Valentine that still exists was sent from a prisoner in the Tower of London (England) to his wife – in 1415.

Advances in printing, of course, had a lot of impact on how common greeting cards became, with much more use and popularity from the mid-1800s to the late 1900s. Christmas cards became especially popular for a while there…

n…But…

nOf course online stuff has gotten in the way of all that success. Paperless is more and more popular for all sorts of things – why not birthday well-wishes, seasonal greetings, get-well messages and thank you notes? These days we can reach out on text, Facebook, or tweet with a simple greeting (emojis, colorful text and backgrounds, and other choices make these “simple” things more and more fun and personal!) – or we can send ecards – including some pretty elaborate, animated ecards!

nFor those messages we type ourselves – text, FB, etc. – WE’RE the greeting card writers! But all the animated ecards that actually say something still need writers to create those somethings.

nAccording to this infographic, 1.5 billion Christmas cards were sent in the U.S. in 2010, accounting for about 45% of all greeting cards being sent! Retail sales of all greeting cards, each year, is about $7.5 billion – and, get this, around 80 to 85% of the greeting cards purchased were bought by women!!