ARGUABLY, the traditional season’s greeting – the Christmas card – is fast becoming an endangered species. In a random, informal survey on this topic, several persons confessed to neither sending nor receiving Christmas cards this year. Some cannot even remember when last they received a card.
Instead, they exchange phone calls with friends and relatives all day long on special occasions like Christmas, all thanks to the onset of improvements in communication.  In short, the Internet and Digital Age have succeeded in converting people’s preferences to sending e-cards to loved ones, rather than the traditional paper variety.
Then there is Facebook. The general view is that more people find it convenient these days to touch base with their loved ones on a more personal basis, particularly at Christmastime, using Facebook as opposed to the snail mail, compared to a mere few years ago, when Christmas cards or letters were the preferred modes of communication.
There are still a hardy few who believe that traditional cards are much more effective than e-cards. Those who maintain this tradition, however, find that there is a big difference between sending an e-card and a paper card. There can be an excess of e-cards in an e-mail inbox that they would not have time to read, and would eventually have to delete them  anyway.
This is usually not the case with a snail-mail card. Unlike E-cards, which are only good for a short while, paper cards can be stored long after the occasion is over. One can open and read every snail-mail card, no matter how many one receives; and they can be kept in storage for a lifetime, thereby preserving sentimental memories.
Many E-cards will soon wind up getting deleted. But that would not be the case with paper cards. The paper card disciple will not shed the conviction that snail-mail is the ideal way to keep in touch with distant friends and relatives, to renew those old ties, and to remind them that they  are not forgotten in spite of their not staying in touch!
The paper card reminds distant ones of the sender, and the snail-mail of how much they care. Those who still send and receive snail-mail say they often browse through those paper cards sent them by relatives and friends years ago. And even though many of those senders may have since died, an aura of warmth and nostalgia engulfs them by just reading and re-reading those snail-mail paper cards.
Those who prefer E-cards, however, cite their convenience, and the fact that most of them are free. “No postage costs either,” one user said.
I have received quite a few Christmas E-cards in my mailbox to date; I do not want to delete them, but I may soon have to.
But the general trend is that paper Christmas cards are increasingly taking a backseat in the celebrations. This traditional way of sending Christmas greetings seems destined to join the ranks of typewriters and video cassettes as outdated relics of the new communications age.