moooonpig...

One thing you can hardly miss on any British high street are the various shops selling little else than greeting cards. Just browsing through the biggest chain store, Clinton Cards, you can find loads and loads of cards for every possible occasion most people probably never have thought of before. Brits simply love to send their greetings in form of good old fashioned paper cards - a tradition which pretty much got lost in Germany.
Christmas wouldn't be christmas on the isles if you wouldn't receive a more or less cute or stylish card from what seems like anyone you ever met in your life (and sometimes not even that).
Those trophees get displayed on the window sills, chimneys or on seasonal washing lines and the whole thing goes that far that some shops are putting up recycling boxes only for christmas cards! But at least your christmas deko is sorted just with opening your post every day, hehe..

www.lakeland.co.uk

The most bizzare result of the British card craze are websites like moonpig or funkypidgeon offering personalized cards to order. The silly names of the companies are not enough to make you wonder, no, the advertising jingels are the thing that really stick to your brain and make it go softer and softer all the time...maybe those companies are American so I´m not counting it against England :-)
I´m really happy that the card sending tradition is still kept alive here and I just love receiving cards which where clearly picked matching them with my personality. The only thing I enjoy even more is browsing through endless shelves taking ages to decide on the right card to send.
Why did this tradition get so out of fashion in Germany (at least amongst the people I know)?
It can´t be mistrust in the mail services, they are as crappy here as they are there. Why is it acceptable in Germany to send an email or a text to say "Happy Birthday"? Who thinks of all the stamp collectors not getting any new ones anymore?
Maybe I´m old-fashioned as I always like to have something "real" to keep so I can find it again later and remember the occasion it was sent for. I love England for the possibility of buying a birthday card with the picture of a hedgehog ( for my hedgehog loving mother-in-law) without any troubles.
1:0 for England!