My birthday is quickly approaching and the excitement is starting to build as the cards start trickling in. Imagine my confusion last week when I opened a card with no return address and noticed the cover said “Congratulations!” I am not celebrating anything other than my birthday, so I pondered what kind of person would send congratulations cards in place of birthday cards?

After staring blankly at the greeting card while wracking my brain trying to figure out what might possibly be the reason for the arbitrary congratulations, I decided to open it and discover which of my friends, at the ripe old age of 28, had already started losing their marbles. As I opened the card, a twenty dollar bill fluttered out onto the floor. I read the obligatory swirly congratulatory greeting that wished me the best today and always, and then noticed the card had no signature at the bottom. After thinking about it for another few minutes, I pocketed the money in true birthday spirit, randomly tossed the card aside and quickly forgot about it.

After a seemingly endless commute home a few days ago, I started up my normal after-work routine – let the dog out, water the plants, start dinner, check the mail for birthday cards. While going through the pile of mail I noticed an identical envelope to the one I had received last week. I hurriedly tore it open in the hopes of receiving another anonymous contribution to my birthday fund and discovered a congratulations card identical to the one I received last week! A signature from my dentist appeared at the bottom, along with a note congratulating me on having no cavities and sincerely apologizing for the blank card previously sent by his new assistant with no explanation. Dr. Rocco also mentioned the need to reorder more birthday cards and blank cards for any occasion, and requested that I remind my husband of his dentist appointment on Friday at 2:30. Who would have thought you could get $20 for no cavities? But as it turns out, a second note appeared in the card…I did not need to contribute my co-pay amount this time around. Oops!

As one of the most recently employed members of the Gallery Collection, I’ve been learning new things on a daily basis. And apparently, there is a lot to learn about business greeting cards. I suppose my experience has not been very different from anyone starting a new job, but what has impressed me the most about my novel surroundings is the genuine kindness of the people here and the lengths they go to show their appreciation for one another. There are even some of my now fellow co-workers who will go so far as to offer congratulations to a person who has sneezed. Yes, that’s right…sneezed!

Now there was, as I later discovered, a much more elaborate reason behind this; a story perhaps better saved for another blog entry, but the idea of someone congratulating another person for something seemingly so simple aroused my curiosity. It got me thinking about the numerous reasons why people are recognized by those who care enough to commemorate them in some way, shape, or form.

And that’s when I saw the light, heard the trumpets blaring and the angels singing…well, maybe it wasn’t that dramatic, but I did realize something. Congratulations cards! I wondered, being just a callow trainee, if we had any of our own. Sure, I already knew about the Christmas cards and birthday cards, but what about this other possibility? I decided to check it out on GalleryCollection.com, and low and behold, I found several unique styles of congratulations cards. And what also makes these all occasion cards so great, just like all of the other greeting cards our company offers, is the availability of personal customization.

So whether it’s a graduation, an engagement, a marriage, a promotion, or a newborn child, the reasons for letting someone special know that his or her achievement is extraordinary are abounding. But sending people greeting cards to congratulate them for sneezing? Well, like I said, that’s a story for another time.

Certainly, it makes one feel terrific to send congratulations cards to friends or acquaintances who have special, personal events that are causes for joy; for instance, the birth of a child, a graduation, the purchase of a new house, a promotion or new job. To be the recipient of such greeting cards at happy times in life can provide memories that are hard to forget.

A few friends actually sent me congratulations cards for a non-traditional kind of event –when the New York Giants won the 2008 Super Bowl. For me, the Giants’ victory over an obviously superior New England Patriots team was one of the high points of my life, since I have been a die-hard Giants fan as far back as I remember. So it was pretty cool to receive greeting cards for this occasion.

In my office, there are two coworkers whom I consider good friends, and who both happen to be devout Patriots fans. None of the three of us actually believed that the Giants really could win but, when it happened, my two buddies were distraught. I, on the other hand, was overjoyed.

Now I consider myself to be a pretty upstanding, honorable guy. In a competition of any type, if I do not have the good fortune of coming out as the winner, I make it my business to make sure I shake my adversary’s hand and give the proper verbal kudos to their victory. Back at work the next morning, one of these coworkers was kind enough to murmur a half-hearted congratulations while the other not only was MAD AT ME (like I had thrown the winning touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress), but he refused to even acknowledge that the Giants were even good enough to be on the same field as the Patriots. Had I received congratulations cards from one or both, I would have made sure to frame them and put them on the wall of my newly-refurbished basement as a fond remembrance of an unlikely victory for my favorite team. But it was not to be. Maybe for the fun of it, next year I’ll send these two friends anniversary cards commemorating the day the Giants won the big game!