For my birthday last year, I threw myself a party and I invited a bunch of people, and I did it by creating an invitation. I used a painted post card I picked up in Iceland—its dramatic red, yellow and orange colors matched the season— and paid a graphic designer friend of mine $100 to turn it into a very cool (if I do say so myself) invitation, printed on substantial paper, which I then mailed to 100 or so people. Using actual stamps.

What the heck, you only turn 30 once.

Some recipients were befuddled—it had been so long since they received a proper invitation. But most seemed to like the card, and appreciated the effort that went into it. I think it gave them the sense that this birthday party was an event which mattered to me, which it was. For one thing, it was the first chance many of them had to meet the woman I’d started dating not long before; she and I would later spend an absurd amount of money on stationery—wedding invitations.

So I’m with Alex Beam when he writes in the Boston Globe about the virtues of stationery.

With the so-called holiday season fast approaching, don’t you dare send me electronic “greetings’’ of any kind. I’ve had it with “e-vites,’’ “e-cards,’’ and their ilk. Five years ago, e-vites had an air of novelty and people actually responded to them. Now I ignore the few that manage to get past my spam filter. Wired magazine said it best: “Evite is great if you’re gonna party like it’s 1999.’’

Beam goes on to say, and I agree, that not all e-vites are equal, and some can look really nice. (Like, for instance, the Save the Date e-card that my sister-in-law designed for my fiancee and me, about which we got a lot of compliments—and since we didn’t have an excess of time between our engagement and our wedding day, the speed of email was helpful.)

Also, for people on a tight budget, there’s certainly virtue in e-cards.

But still—there’s something about receiving an invitation, or a handwritten note, or even, dare I say it, a letter, in the mail that is different and special. I suspect that will only become more true in the years ahead.