The Novelty of Sending Homemade Greeting Cards

The Novelty of Sending Homemade Greeting Cards

Creating beautiful homemade cards is such a rewarding way of spending time with family and friends. The joy of gathering card making ideas, embellishments, images, fonts, and paper stock to make the cards and the contentment that homemade greeting cards give to the recipients are feelings that cannot be purchased. Being the recipient of a homemade card instills a feeling of love and consideration.

History of Greeting Cards

Greeting cards started out as simple slips of papyrus, which were exchanged by both the Egyptians and Chinese as messages of goodwill. The Chinese sent these greeting cards because of their beliefs that sending such a card would ward off the Nien, an ancient beast that attacked villagers during the end of each year (http://ezinearticles.com/?The-History-of-Greeting-Cards---An-Overview&id=271744).

In the 1400’s, the Europeans picked up the tradition and began sending homemade greeting cards on holidays. The cost for supplies and printing were expensive, so this tradition was most popular amongst the wealthy. During this same time period, Germans began printing New Year’s greetings from woodcut.

New Year’s cards did not become popular until the 1700’s; although the earliest New Year’s cards can be dated back to the 1400’s when the Chinese started the tradition. The most popular cards of the 15th century were Christmas and Valentines cards. Easter, Thanksgiving, and Halloween cards gained popularity in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s (http://www.netogram.com/history.htm).

In 1840, the world’s first postage stamp was created, which in turn commercialized the greeting card. In 1843, Sir Henry Cole invented the first commercial greeting card for Christmas in...

... middle of paper ...

...ngs of love, wellbeing, and consideration in its recipient.

References

Berger, A. (2008). Seeing is believing: An introduction to visual communication. Boston: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Colloff-Bennet, T. (2009, December 19). The history of greeting cards unfurled. Retrieved July7, 2010, from http://quillcards.com/blog/index.php/2009/12/19/the-history-of-greeting-cards-unfurled/

Ezine. (2006, August 17). The history of greeting cards: An overview. Retrieved on July 5, 2010, from http://ezinearticles.com/?The-History-of-Greeting-Cards---An-Overview&id=271744

Netogram. (2001). History of the greeting card. Retrieved July 6, 2010, from http://www.netogram.

com/history.htm

Weyhrich, S. (1992, September 21). Apple II history. Retrieved July 7, 2010, from http://apple2history.

org/history/appy/aha84.html#1984