Words by me

I’m not a big fan of greetings cards. People buy them automatically, at prescribed times, regardless of whether they want to or not. People buy meaningless, sentimental, mass-produced cards from jumbo tat emporiums, write something meaningless inside and send it off to join the meaningless pile.

I take it all back

Now, they’re not always a waste of time. I’ve received some funny and touching cards in my life, and I’ve been very happy to receive them. What I object to is the millions of cards sent without thought, just because there’s an occasion that society has deemed to demand a card.

Writing something special

Having explained my animosity towards greetings cards, I’d now like to discuss my inability to write anything meaningful in said cards. Perhaps it’s because I dislike our card-giving culture that I can’t usually think of anything good to write in them.

Corporate nightmare

Once, when I worked for a large company and there were endless birthdays and retirements to commemorate with cards, I resorted to writing ‘Good luck’ in every card that passed my desk – mainly because I couldn’t face the frustrating wait for something meaningful, witty or wise to come to mind.

But you’re a copywriter!

My partner cannot understand why I’m so bad at writing messages in cards. She thinks that because I’m a copywriter and I spend most of my time writing things for my clients, I should be better. But writing for clients is easy – it’s just cards that leave me dry.

Happy Apocalypse!

In light of current events, I’ve been working on some new greetings cards, which I’m sure we’ll all be sending each other soon enough:

* Sorry to hear about your enormous carbon footprint
* See you after the cold war
* Happy irreversible climate change!

How do you cope?

How do you feel about cards? Are you a slave to greetings-card culture? Do you find it easy to write messages in people’s cards? Do you know the trick to writing warm or witty messages in cards? Please answer these questions in the comments section below!

(Picture courtesy of Chatiryworld)