Why Thank You Cards and Letters Are Right On Trend (and Why They Deserve to Be)

•  Jhil01
  Tuesday, February 2, 2016
• , AL, USA

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Reports of the demise of letter writing have been with us for decades, but happily it now looks as though the situation has been much exaggerated. As explained in a 2014 New York Times article entitled The Found Art of Thank-You Notes, letter writing is back in vogue, and the most flourishing examples of the genre are hand written thank you cards and notes. Fashion publicists, editors and celebrities are among the many fans of this accelerating trend, and we applaud their good taste and refined sensibilities.

However, we’d like to point out that you don’t need to be a high-powered, highly educated individual to go with this particular flow. Here’s why we think the art of writing thank you letters is a pastime everyone can, and should, enjoy.

Online Social Media Make Writers of Us All

Thanks to the telephone, any reasonably well-off person alive in the years between 1960 and 2005 could get by without having to write very much. Social life ticked over nicely with the help of phone calls, with perhaps an occasional holiday postcard or Christmas card in the mix as well. But with the arrival of the smartphone, email, instant messaging and online chat became universal, and the phone’s function as an instrument for transmitting voice communication was relegated to second place.
We’re all writers now, even the most un-literary of us, even if it’s just to make status updates on Facebook or fill in our Tinder profile. Writing a thank you card and sending it in the post isn’t such a big deal when you’ve had so much practice typing your thoughts into a minuscule box on a tiny screen.

Virtual Mementos are Ephemeral

Even though it’s possible to archive digital communications, most of us wouldn’t have much idea where to start if we wanted to save our online correspondence. And users of Snapchat take the ephemeral to its logical extreme by using a technology where messages are designed to disappear after ten seconds. It’s good to live in the moment, but many members of today’s digital generation also recognise that it’s a shame to completely turn their backs on the past. Recall is fragile: real keepsakes such as cards, letters and concert tickets can be a portal to a world of beautiful memories which would otherwise be forgotten.

Stationery is a Joy for Sender and Recipient

However much you love technology, you have to admit that stationery is tremendously seductive. It’s more affordable than electronic gadgets, too, especially if you buy just one or two sheets of fine paper or a single, glorious card. As every regular letter writer knows, the real magic of stationery happens when you send it: the effort expended by the sender creates a delight and warmth in the recipient which can be enjoyed again and again.

No video call or Christmas jumper-wearing selfie can quite equal a handwritten thank you for the pleasure it brings. And it’s a lot more complicated to include a child’s drawing in an email than it is to tuck it inside a real envelope. This simplicity and ability to please is, above all else, why we’re delighted thank you cards are a growing trend, and why we think they deserve to be one for a very long time to come.

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