When Can I Do a Patriotic Mailing?

Tag: greeting cards

Dear Ms. Cards Etiquette,

There is a military base here in town, and I’d like to do a patriotic mailing, showing our support for the troops without risking alienating any of our non-military clientele. While we could just send the mailing to on-base addresses, I’d hate to miss the military families living in off-base housing. How would you recommend dealing with this kind of touchy issue?

Proud American

Well, I’m assuming you don’t want to wait to send a 4th of July holiday mailing,but there are a lot of other patriotic holidays throughout the year that would be a perfect opportunity to show some red, white and blue without raising anyone’s hackles.

Choose a politically neutral card with patriotic artwork, and affix a flag stamp on each envelope, and write a nice message inside about showing appreciation to everyone who makes our country great. (One particular card I like is ‘Patriotic Thank You Card‘ which you can send any time you want to thank someone.) Military families will no doubt understand what you mean, and other recipients are free to interpret the sentiment however they wish!

Here’s a list of patriotic dates throughout the year for 2008 (in parenthesis is the day of the month for holidays that do not fall on the same date every year):