I have some friends who live in London. They started having kids a few years ago (six, if my math is correct) and given a) the length of time it can take physical mail to get across the pond, and b) my challenges with the space-time continuum, I often found that when their wee ones’ birthdays rolled around, a digital card was really my only timely alternative. However, the weak link in that chain was that they are not always on top of e-mail, and could take up to two weeks to actually download the digital card (according to Hallmark.com), which meant that I didn’t get the credit for remembering a birthday. However, over the past couple of years I have become better at identifying birthdays in advance and sending printed cards through the post. And, huzzah! I get the credit and am back in everyone’s good graces. I have always had mixed feelings about printed vs. digital greeting cards, and have always preferred the former, for the basic reason that I never came across any digital cards that were as witty or as emotionally appealing as their printed counterparts. They were always just some kind of Flash animation and cheesy Casio keyboard noises. I acknowledge this is strictly a personal preference, but digital greeting cards for me have always just been a desperation move. “I forgot!” and “I put this off until the last minute!” have always been the unspoken messages of any digital card I have ever sent. When you care enough to send the most expedient. Plus, and perhaps I am showing my age, a well-written and beautifully printed greeting card seems like an actual gift. (Except cards that play music which is just wrong.) People do actually save a lot of the cards they get. An electronic card always just seemed kind of cheap and chintzy. That could just be me, of course, but try bringing an electronic card to a wedding reception and see how well that goes over. I bring this up because TwoSides UK has a story about how printed greeting cards—like almost anything print-related these days—are now under attack as being environmentally unfriendly. Says a press release from DigitalGreetingCard.org:

On DigitalGreetingCard.org, consumers can declare their independence from paper greeting cards and ask their friends to do the same. To declare independence from paper greeting cards, consumers have to vow to never again send a paper card to someone who will just throw it away.

Oh, I don’t know. It’s one thing to use digital cards in certain situations (like desperation) but quite another to “vow” never to send a printed card ever again. You know, picking and choosing cards is stressful enough (without even getting into the whole Christmas “holitics” of whom to send a card to) without having to take vows about my media choice. The press release also adds,

The new Digital Greeting Cards service is a suitable alternative to traditional paper greeting cards complete with attractive folded designs, matching envelopes, realistic postmarks, and the complete mail-opening experience.

Say what? I’d love to know exactly what this means, but the trouble is, if you go to their site you can’t even see what their greeting cards are like without first signing their “oath.” Sorry; I sign nothing without first knowing what I’m getting into. Not that I would sign such an oath to begin with... Oh, and let’s not even mention my normal bugaboo about pixels not being more sustainable than print and paper. Digital vs. printed greeting cards are, like any other media choice, just that: a choice. On a strictly environmental level, I don’t find compelling evidence that one is better than the other. So it really is a function of what I choose to send—and what recipients prefer to receive. Oh, and how late I am.