Chinese New Year E-Cards that are Free!

It will soon be time to celebrate the Chinese New Year. An easy and fun way to share the holiday with your friends and family is to send them Chinese New Year e-cards. By sending electronic greeting cards you will help to reduce the waste in our landfills and contribute to the preservation of trees. It’s good for your budget, and it’s good for the environment.

When looking for websites that offer online greeting cards, I found that some of them were slow to update their Chinese New Year e-cards with the correct animal of the twelve animals represented in the Chinese Zodiac. Many cards don’t reference an animal and will be fine to use, but make sure any references to one of the animals in the Chinese Zodiac are correct. Here’s a list that will help you:

2009 Year of the Ox

2010 Year of the Tiger

2011 Year of the Rabbit

2012 Year of the Dragon

2013 Year of the Snake

2014 Year of the Horse

2015 Year of the Sheep

2016 Year of the Monkey

2017 Year of the Rooster

2018 Year of the Dog

2019 Year of the Pig

2020 Year of the Rat

Check the following websites to find free email cards for Chinese New Year.

http://www.123greetings.com/ has a nice selection of more than 2 dozen e-cards for Chinese New Year. They are organized into about a dozen categories. All of them are free to send.

http://www.hallmark.com/ only has a hand full of online greeting cards to celebrate Chinese New Year, but they had very nice, high quality graphics. They are all free.

http://www.bluemountain.com/ offers an excellent selection of high quality e-greeting cards. Unfortunately only a few of them are free. Look for the “free” sign next to the image of the e-card. The site also offers an annual subscription which may be worth it if you plan to eliminate printed cards from your budget. It also offers a one month free trial.

At http://www.care2.com/ you will find about a dozen and a half free Chinese New Year e-cards. Care2 allows you to blind-copy all your recipients if you send the same card to more than one person. I like that feature for the privacy it offers. What I don’t like about this website is that it is rather heavy handed in pushing the social causes that it supports. I also had a few difficulties using the site. One time it allowed me to send an email card without signing up for an account. Another time it required an account. The account was free but I had some trouble with the registration process. I ended up rather annoyed with the site. Some people will like it because of its social activism.

http://www.aussieindolanka.com/ has only five Chinese New Year e-card choices but they are very nice quality.

http://wickedmoon.com/ doesn’t have any online greeting cards specifically designed for Chinese New Year, but it does have a very cool dragon one. You can add your own Chinese New year message.

Have a happy and prosperous New Year.

Resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/

www.greetingcard.org/ (fact sheet about greeting card use)