Greetings from vulgar Britain

"Greetings from vulgar Britain: Offensive and obscene cards shame our country"
Shouts the Daily Mail headline..!

"When ALLISON PEARSON went to buy a birthday card for her mum, she was horrified by what she found - cards so offensive and obscene she felt ashamed of her country. And the sorry truth is, most are bought by women.

Female Traffic Warden: 'Anything you say will be taken down!' Male motorist: 'Knickers!' Yes, I know it's a gag so ancient it makes Bob Monkhouse look cutting edge. But sometimes, the old ones are the best, aren't they? Certainly when it comes to greetings card jokes.

The saucy card has long enjoyed an affectionate place in the British imagination - and rightly so.

For a people who were keen on sex, but just weren't very good at talking about it, they offered a welcome outlet for a snigger and a giggle.

Cartoons of hen-pecked husbands . . . doctors and nurses with wandering stethoscopes . . . waiters in trousers so tight you could see their religion . . . barmaids with a cleavage that Evel Knievel would have struggled to jump across on his motorbike. . . they've all brought a cheeky smile to the face of many a birthday recipient

Captions like 'I've got to get Mrs Gimlet to Oldham and then I'm going to Bangor as fast as I can' only added to the fun.

Embarrassment was the repressed Englishman's strongest emotion. Innuendo made a virtue of that fact. Double meanings gave you a good laugh without being too aggressively crude.

Innuendo also made Brits the world champs at wordplay. Greetings cards with saucy double entendres sold in their millions.

It was an essentially innocent approach epitomised by the late, great Donald McGill's incomparable illustrations of wobbling female flesh and pink- cheeked peeping Toms that so captivated generations of seaside holidaymakers.

Cards like his were a naughty-but-nice part of British humour. In my naivety, I thought that was still the case.

Then, the other day, I popped into my local branch of Scribblers with the kids to buy my mum a birthday card. Naturally, I assumed that in a greetings card chain with branches all over Britain's High Streets, the merchandise would be suitable for family viewing. Big mistake.

'What does OFF YOUR T*** mean, Mum?' bellowed the eight-year-old, holding up one card. I grabbed it off him and was putting it back when I did a double-take. The other cards in the rack made that first one look as pure as a snowy Nativity scene.

'Happy birthday to the office slut' ran the caption over a picture of a girl sitting on a desk in just a bra and skirt.

A photo from the Fifties of an elegant, Princess Margaret type bore the charming greeting: 'FYI: You're a cheap good for nothing rancid old slag.' So Dorothy Parker can rest on her witty laurels. Not much of a double meaning there, eh"

Story continues...

Greeting Cards Market Is on the Upswing

Greeting Cards Market Is on the Upswing as Card Shoppers Turn to Speciality Retailers for More Specialized Product Offerings.

New Study From Unity Marketing Finds That Greeting Cards Were the Fastest Growing Category in the Overall Stationery Market.

In 2006 the market for greeting cards made a big comeback after four years of steadily declining sales, rising over 11 percent from 2004 to 2006. In 2006 the market for greeting cards climbed to over $10 billion. This according to the latest report on the stationery market from Unity Marketing.

This revival of speciality retail for greeting cards comes after years of a steady drop in the number of speciality retailers in the card and gift segments. The number of gift shops dropped 21 percent from 75,0102 stores in 2002 to 59,032 shops today. Speciality card shops declined even more -- 33 percent from 8,135 in 2002 to 5,391 currently.

Source Marketwire

Antique Greeting Cards - Collecting

From BBC Antiques.

Greetings cards have exchanged hands since the 18th century and are now a popular collecting area. Clive Farahar from the Antiques Roadshow, has advice on starting a collection; where to buy, what to avoid and affordable cards to collect.

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BBC Woman's Hour - Greeting Cards

From BBC Radio 4.

"Here in Britain we send more cards that other country in the world. Two point two billion every year. It takes a dedicated army of verse composers to feed that hungry industry and most of these writers tend to be women. Cindy Selby met two of them, Elaine Greenall from Milton Keynes and Milly Johnson from Yorkshire".


Listen again to this interview
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Old Soviet Russian New Year Greeting Cards.

From Mazaika, a wonderful collection.

"More than 700 Russian Soviet New Year greeting cards".

"Here you can see postcards of soviet era (1950 - 1990).
You can find here pictures of soviet Santa - Ded Moroz.
His daughter (or may be girlfriend) Snegurochka - snow girl.
Soviet Xmas tree - Yolochka - with Russian Red Star on top.
Snowman - Snegovik - made by soviet children - Oktyabryata.
And many other funny creatures big and small.
And also 200+ vintage European Christmas greeting cards..."

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Greeting Cards Back in Fashion

From The Georgian Times

"...greeting cards were widely used to promote Soviet ideology, and you could see a number of cards with Stalin’s image, and much-proclaimed Soviet slogans in Soviet times too. Christmas cards were also given a political spin. Despite print runs of as high as 30 million in USSR, well-wishers of the 1950s and 1960s were left with little consumer choice, since the same few designs were repeated year after year. Rather than folding cards, the New Year cards of this period were often flat, with designs inspired by the latest economic achievements: rockets, lit-up apartment blocks and building cranes. For instance, Space themes dominated the Christmas cards in 1960s-70s. One card shows a spaceman dragging a fir-tree, another a Russian Ded Moroz (Santa Claus) is a space descending the gangway of the spaceship, and still another showing the horses of Ded Moroz flying along the rockets...".

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Read more - about Georgia
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Snail mail is still king of greetings

It would be so easy and inexpensive. Sit down at your computer, select a cute holiday e-card and zap it to the dozens of people on your contact list. No cards or stamps to buy. No envelopes to address. You’re done.

So why are so few people doing it?

The reason is simple, industry experts say. The ubiquity of electronic communication has made e-mails commonplace and snail mail more special and important. In fact, there’s a backlash under way, some experts say, and many women are trying to add more authenticity and meaning to the messages they send by assembling the cards themselves.

It’s easy to explain why electronic greetings aren’t supplanting the old-fashioned Christmas card, industry players say. You might call it the “keepsake phenomenon” or the “mantel test.”

“Try putting an e-card on your mantel. Try pulling it out a year from now,” said Sue Lindstrom, the founder and creative force behind Paper Source, a chain of 20 specialty paper and stationery stores based in Chicago. “Electronic communication is becoming more and more important for business and less and less important as a way to communicate real feelings.”

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