Kartu ucapan secara konvensional berupa selembar kartu dalam berbagai macam ukuran, dibuat dari kertas tebal atau karton dan memiliki gambar sesuai tema kartu. Kartu biasanya dilipat dua dengan bagian dalam berisi ucapan selamat atau pesan yang ditujukan kepada penerima.
Kartu ucapan biasanya dikirimkan atau diberikan pada kesempatan khusus, seperti hari ulang tahun, Idul Fitri, pernikahan, dan hari Natal. Kartu ucapan juga sering digunakan untuk menulis pesan bernada humor, persahabatan, cinta, simpati, atau sekadar mengucapkan terima kasih. Karangan bunga, parsel, atau kado juga sering disertai selembar kartu ucapan.
The custom of
sending greeting cards can be traced back to the ancient Chinese, who exchanged
messages of good will to celebrate the New Year, and to the early Egyptians,
who conveyed their greetings on papyrus scrolls. By the early 15th century, handmade paper
greeting cards were being exchanged in Europe. The Germans are known to have
printed New Year's greetings from woodcuts as early as 1400, and handmade paper
Valentines were being exchanged in various parts of Europe in the early to
mid-15th century, with the oldest Valentine in existence being in the British
Museum.
By the 1850s,
the greeting card had been transformed from a relatively expensive, handmade
and hand-delivered gift to a popular and affordable means of personal
communication, due largely to advances in printing, mechanization, and a reduction in
postal rates with the introduction of the postage stamp. This
was followed by new trends like Christmas
cards, the first of which appeared in published form in London in
1843 when Sir Henry Cole hired artist John Calcott Horsley to design a holiday
card that he could send to his friends and acquaintances. In the 1860s,
companies like Marcus Ward & Co, Goodall and Charles
Bennett began the mass production of greeting cards. They employed well known
artists such as Kate Greenaway and Walter Crane
as illustrators and card designers.
