IN an increasingly digital age, it is good to know that some traditions of correspondence are still in apparently rude health.

Nowadays, the barrage of e-mails, texts and tweets has reached such a level that for many of us, significant chunks of our daily lives - working and domestic - are spent checking messages and replying to them, or firing off pithy electronic missives ourselves.

If humans are still inhabiting this planet as a meaningful species a couple of million years from now, I foresee that the single most obvious change to our physical being will have been the development of huge, incredibly strong and dextrous thumbs - for texting, tweeting, or whatever - to the detriment of the rest of our digits, which will remain as they are now, or will have shrunk to make room for their overused, oversized neighbour.

A report this week however, from the Greeting Card Association (GCA), indicates that the industry is still going strong, and that up and down the UK, we still invest time and money in the buying and sending of cards.

The GCA's Greeting Card Market Report 2014 shows that in 2013 we in the UK spent £1.29 billion on individual cards, more apparently than on tea and coffee put together.

And more cards are bought per person in the UK than in any other country, an average of 31 per person. In all, 884 million single greeting cards were bought from retailers, be they supermarkets or corner grocery stores, post offices or newsagents.

The report also reveals that the value of the market has increased by 5.4 per cent.

It is an undeniable fact that in our house at least, the volume of cards we receive has fallen.

Christmas is the time when this phenomenon mostly reveals itself. Until six or seven years ago, we struggled each festive season to find enough surfaces upon which to stand Christmas cards, a task made more difficult by Lady Weekender's pathological hatred of the Christmas card string, which in countless other homes turns chimney breasts into colourful 'washing lines' of cards.

I have to admit to being in agreement with her on this point, though my views are certainly less potent than hers.

Nowadays however, the issue doesn't arise. It may be of course that a significant number of our previous Yuletide correspondents just don't like us anymore. More likely (hopefully) is that less people send cards at Christmas.

We get some e-mail greetings or a quick 'Happy Christmas' text from some, but frankly, I cannot reciprocate.

Hunting out a good Christmas card, or box of cards, is a uniquely rewarding experience, particularly for me, if I can find what I'm looking for from a stall set up by the creator themselves at a Christmas market.

One of the highlights of the run-up to Christmas is to sit down with a glass of wine and some music in the background, and write messages in a stack of cards.

Again, Lady Weekender will take issue with this, pointing out with a degree of accuracy that it is a task that usually falls to her, or at least it is she who writes the lion's share of our Christmas cards.

I am not going to argue too much with her over this, as the threat of attempted strangulation with one of the aforementioned Christmas card strings - put as she might see it, to a far more practical use - is never far away.

But when I get the chance in my increasingly crowded schedule to do the Christmas cards, it is something I enjoy immensely.

Mother's Day is apparently a very strong source of card-sending, outdoing Easter, and of course the birthday market is an all-round source of income for the industry.

There is one 'occasion' in which I steadfastly refuse to partake, and that is Valentine's Day. We Brits spent more than £40m on such cards last year, which means that many of us are either incurable romantics, or soppy mugs who are annually seduced by a cynical marketing ploy.

I have never in my 50 years sent or received a Valentine's Day card and Lady Weekender is in no doubt, wherever the danger to my physical wellbeing, that she will not be receiving one - from me, at least.

But whatever the occasion or occasions we feel the need to send a card, it still feels important to make that effort, and if you're like me, it still feels special to receive one, to keep the digital age at least partly at bay.