Sending a greeting card was once the norm in celebrating occasions such as birthdays and holidays. Popular Hallmark and Gibsons cards, often containing rhyming verses, were bought in bookstores and mailed to celebrants. There was a wide variety of choices, categorized according to the relationship of the sender to the recipient or the occasion.

Nowadays, greetings are sent online through social media sites, chat groups, email and smartphones. Cards are still sold in bookstores, but there are fewer buyers. An unnamed store in Hogg Market in Kolkata, India, is the only one remaining from the many greeting card shops that thrived in the 1980s.

“There was a time when people crowded at this shop, waiting to buy cards for every occasion. Christmas, New Year, weddings, anniversaries and seasonal greetings filled the shelves in endless designs. Hundreds of orders were placed every year between December and January,” recalled Nirmal Dutta, who has been running the store since 1989, The Telegraph India reported.

Dutta said he no longer orders new cards and is selling stocks from last year, as only two or three cards are bought each week. One of the buyers, Indrajit Sinha, sends wedding anniversary greeting cards to a friend every year, keeping the practice alive.

In the United States, three sisters are continuing their late grandfather’s practice of mailing greeting cards to family members on every occasion.

Marcy Angelo, Courtney Pantone, and Kristen Angelo started the website Project Tom in honor of Tom Plumeret, who passed away in 2019. Through the website, anyone can request to send a greeting card anywhere in the world for free, and the sisters will handwrite a personalized message on the card before mailing it to the recipient.

“We have decided to make Project Tom a way to spread the love year-round,” the sisters said in a message posted on the website.

Fund donors cover the cost of the cards and postage.

ABC News reported that Project Tom has sent more than 16,000 greeting cards to 30 countries since 2019.