Religious greeting cards are new best-sellers. Hallmark and American Greetings, the nation's two biggest card makers, say sales of religious cards, especially Christian ones, began picking up at the end of the last millennium and spiked more sharply after Sept. 11, 2001.
"Religion is part of that searching for security," said Tina Benavides, creative vice president for American Greetings, who attributes her company's higher sales of religious cards directly to terrorism and the war in Iraq. Others point to the growing profile of religion in popular culture and politics.
"Once upon a time you could casually send a religious greeting card and it didn't make a statement one way or the other. These things didn't send any red lights up," says Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University professor who studies popular culture. "For any number of reasons, pop culture was more secularized in that period. Then all of a sudden ... that changes around about the turn of the century."
One-fourth of all American Greetings cards sold last year were considered spiritual or religious, and the company has increased its offerings of such cards by 20 percent over the past three years. Even as church attendance has declined in the United States, interest in spirituality has remained steady or grown, with religion-themed books on best-seller lists and faith-based films leading at the box office. Faith-oriented retail items such as cards, novels and children's games that once sold only in niche stores can now be found in major department stores. Hallmark spokeswoman Deidre Parkes cited an increase, especially since Sept. 11, in sales of "overtly religious" cards -- those that offer a Bible verse or Nativity scene on their cover.
http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/faith_values/article/0,1426,MCA_4076_4249407,00.html
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