So Whatcha Gonna Do, Card Me?

Hallmark, the greeting card behemoth, is worried.

Today's Associated Press article tells me that consumers are buying a lot fewer—a billion fewer— greeting cards per year than they were a decade ago.

A number like a billion doesn't mean all that much to me. I understand numbers that come in the size of fingers on hands or eggs in a carton or dollars on an electric bill. But I get the general idea: a billion is a lot of cards and sales are going away.

It's not hard to figure this out. With so many ways—speedy ways—to communicate, who's got the inclination to take the time to choose a card, dig up an address and slap on a stamp, not to mention hunt down a mail box to drop it in?

I'm not really feeling blue about Hallmark. Big companies have a way of tacking when market conditions shift. (Though I do feel for labor when an industry's in transition.) But I do get a bit downcast thinking about what we lose when we abandon the tactile for the virtual, the plodding for the quick.

Don't get me wrong: I love speed. I love immediacy. I love that I can take care of business in almost-real-time. I love that I can type a note to a friend in a jiff, hit the send button, and by the time I've reached for my mug and taken a sip of tea, my little bit of correspondence has already arrived at its destination. Instant gratification!

But I'm convinced of the value of the old-fashioned ways of correspondence. And it's not really about the mass-produced Hallmark sentiment. I'm thinking of the love note tucked in a lunch pail, the personal invitation, the letter of condolence, the unexpected missive sent off to a friend.

I actually make a lot of my cards. Or cobble my cards from a jumble of materials I keep on hand. I thrill to the trappings: the paper and the pens and the scissors. The rulers and the glues and the razor blades. Friends sometimes tell me how pleased they are with what I've sent. But I don't really know if they at all understand where it is I'm coming from. When I collect those materials to fashion a card or choose the words to compose a note, the pleasure is entirely mine. What joy it is to offer a friend a piece of me that says, I saved this moment to think of you. Only you.