Even 10 to 15 years ago, the joy of Eid meant new clothes and handmade Eid cards. Digital messaging cannot compare to the feeling of writing greetings on your own handmade Eid cards and telling your friends "Eid Mubarak". In the current era of social media, the traditional custom of distributing Eid cards has been lost.
I remember that I used to start making Eid cards three to four days before Eid. Sometimes I would use watercolors, crayons, or cut out glossy paper to make these Eid cards. I would try to make cards that were more beautiful than my friends'.
On the morning of Eid, these cards were exchanged among friends. Which doubled the joy of Eid.
After a few years, these Eid cards started being sold in various shops. These shops were available in cities, neighborhoods, and even villages. Many boys and girls would make Eid cards themselves and set up shops to sell them. After staying up all night to make Eid cards and selling them in the afternoon to get the money, the joy of Eid seemed to double.
Then came the Eid cards printed in the press. These Eid cards would have "Eid Mubarak" written in large letters with greetings. There would also be natural scenes, birds, mosque domes, pictures of Makkah Sharif, etc. On the cards, there would be a commemorative moon and star on the domed mosque. Or "Eid Mubarak" written in the middle of a bouquet of red roses.
With Eid in sight, there was a booming business in cities and villages everywhere.
After that, the popularity of handmade Eid cards gradually stopped. Now, school and college boys and girls no longer come in groups to buy Eid cards for friends and relatives like before.
However, although the trend of exchanging Eid cards at the individual level has decreased, the popularity of group-based Eid cards has increased. Starting from government and private institutions, various organizations are now using Eid cards to express their wishes.
Then, the touch of technology came to Eid greetings. SMS and MMS took over the place of Eid cards. We used to try to write greetings as beautifully as possible. I would type these greetings on my button mobile phone. Then I would send them one by one to my friends' mobile numbers. Different greetings would also come from my friends' numbers. The joy that came from taking the time to think about writing SMS greetings is now not available in anything else.
This tendency to write SMS with difficulty also decreased to a large extent later. Smartphones and social media came along. Most people now fulfill their obligations by sending greetings on Facebook, Messenger, email, e-cards, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and WhatsApp. These social media are being used as an alternative means of greetings instead of cards made with difficulty by hand.
Currently, more than a hundred online card-making websites have been developed for Eid cards. When you go to these websites, you can see thousands of Eid card samples.
You can choose the card of your choice from these samples and add your own design to it to create an Eid card. There are also separate websites for sending status or greeting messages on social media. You can easily copy the message of your choice from these websites and send it to your friends.
Shopkeepers said that earlier, Eid cards could not be sold from the beginning of Ramadan. Each shop sold one to five lakh taka of Eid cards every day. Everyone used to wait for this time. Now, a handful of organizations order a small number of cards. Apart from them, cards are not printed for retail sale.