The tradition of sending and receiving greeting cards is an important part of the Western culture. Every year, most of the western countries have their inhabitants spending billions on these beautiful items to express their personal feelings to dear ones. In the U.S., around 3,000 big and small greeting card manufacturers are reported to be active and the number of greeting cards sold per year is put at a staggering 7 billion, generating nearly $7.5 billion in retail sales.
The ancient Egyptians, who exchanged wishes in the form of personal notes on simple papyrus slips, are believed to be the pioneers of the tradition of exchanging greeting cards. The custom is also said to have been existent in Greece and China around the same time. These are held to be the predecessors of the handmade paper greeting cards, which had become a common way of expressing good wishes by the early 13th century. Sending love notes on decorated paper strips had already become popular by this time, courtesy the action of a kindly priest named Valentine whom we all seem to know so well.
But the tradition of exchanging greeting cards actually received attention in Europe with the introduction of the postage stamp in 1840. This one change altered the fortunes of the humble greeting card, which was not until then taken too seriously, and turned it into a popular medium to send personal messages. It immediately set off its commercial production on a huge scale. Within a decade, greeting cards began to be created for a number of occasions prominent among which were New Year's Day, Valentine's Day and Christmas.
Father's Day began to be eyed as a potential greeting card holiday by card companies soon after it was established as an official national holiday in 1966. The occasion, however, became a popular holiday to send cards only after 1972, when President Richard Nixon formally announced the third Sunday of June as the annual time of celebrating Father's Day in the U.S.. Mass production of Father's day cards began a few years after this and gradually began to run shoulder-to-shoulder with homemade greeting cards for fathers. In the U.S. and several other countries, Fathers Day is now the fourth biggest festival in terms of cards sale.
Today, numerous companies have joined the bandwagon in the race for producing the best Father's Day cards. While these were originally purchased by little children or teenagers for their dads, nowadays such cards are being sent not only to fathers but all father figures, including uncles, elder brothers, brothers-in-law, grandfathers and even mentors who act as a role model or a guide or a source of support for a person. Some women even love to present Father's Day cards to their husbands for being a wonderful dad to their kids.
With the rise of the Internet, almost every sphere of the life of an average person has been changed by the online world. This has also affected the way of sending greeting cards. Whereas a traditional paper greeting card still requires to be bought from a store and delivered either personally or through postal means, it is far easier to pick an e-card (Electronic Card) from among a plethora of websites dedicated to the sending of cards. Most of these websites offer free service to people to choose and send the cards to the e-mail accounts of their dear ones with a nice personal message. The e-cards are seen as a tough competitor to the traditional paper greeting cards in the sense that one can pick them from the comforts of their home, customize them to a greater extent, add in their own recorded messages or songs for greater impact and best of all - send them for free.
DeepestFeelings.com is one of the best websites around offering you a wide range of e-cards on different holidays and festivals to choose from. Click here (hyperlink to Father's Day cards page of DF) to pick any of our fabulous Father's Day e-cards and send it for free to your daddy dear or a father figure of your life.
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