GREETINGS A LA MODE

GREETINGS A LA MODE
As I write these words, Rosh Hashana is almost here – which accounts for the deluge of emails and texts with a routine message: health, happiness, peace, etc. This is only the beginning of a long season of greetings from Christmas to New Year’s, usually sent digitally. I fear that paper greeting cards may become obsolete.
I guess I belong in an earlier era because I miss sending and receiving cards with familiar handwriting on them. I miss scanning racks of cards in a store and choosing different ones for friends and family, geared to individual tastes. I especially enjoyed buying comical ones for friends who still had a sense of humor. I remember searching years ago for a Mother’s Day card that wouldn’t drip with sentimentality. I found one that read, Mother you made me what I am today… , NEUROTIC. I didn’t think my mother would appreciate this, but I bought it for myself.
The history buff in me decided to research how greeting cards began. Actually they owe their origin to postcards. In the mid-19th century an Austrian economics professor named Emmanuel Herman suggested that brief letters could be sent thriftily on cards. A major newspaper published this idea and it rapidly spread throughout Europe and the United States. Millions of. korrespondencekartes were sold the first months and by the end of the 1890’s they were featuring pictures on one side.
Polish artist Haim Goldberg became the principal designer of these cards, with the aid of paint and graphics. He also used actors dressed in traditional clothes, and had them model Jewish scenes such as weddings, family portraits, and so on. Goldberg even composed rhymed greetings in Yiddish. Greeting cards had been born. (Their popularity long outlived their creator, for Goldberg was murdered by the Nazis in 1943.)
Despite my nostalgia, I’m well aware that typing words on a keyboard or finding messages pre-selected by the Internet, is a lot more convenient than having to shop, address envelopes, get to the post office, and whatnot. But as with so much in life, convenience isn’t everything.
Website: annehosansky.com

Comments are closed.