Is 2014 the year the Christmas card died?

Last year Card Aid opened 30 temporary shops across the UK, often in churches and vacant premises, to sell Christmas cards benefiting a wide range of charities. This year it is opening just 10 – and it blames the cost of first class stamps and changing social habits among the young for a dramatic fall in sales.

Dame Hilary Blume, who runs the Charities Advisory Trust’s Card Aid scheme, said sales are tumbling, while others reckon that within a decade the traditional Christmas card could all but disappear.

The cost of a first class stamp – now 62p – is deterring many, and the decline in sales that first began at the onset of the credit crisis is beginning to accelerate.

It doesn’t help, she says, that teenagers brought up on email barely know how to address an envelope.

“At our own organisation we were planning to send 600 out to our members, but we won’t this year because it was going to cost us £400 or so in stamps, and we can’t afford it. People are taking the same decisions at home and who can blame them?” she says.

The Charities Advisory Trust lobbied the Treasury for years to allow Royal Mail to introduce a lower-priced charity card stamp, as she says they have in the Netherlands, but it was repeatedly rejected. “The fact that people can sit down at their computer and create a Tony Blair-style photo of the family at home, or playing with the dog or cat, is also a factor.

“I also think buyers are less engaged with it. In the past people would put the cards all over the house – it was a part of Christmas – but less so today. We had some 14-year-olds in for work experience this week and none of them knew how to address an envelope properly. All these factors have conspired against us,” she says.

Rob Jenkinson, who distributes Sreepur Cards, which are made in Bangladesh – the only charity Christmas card which sees 100% of the price paid going to the charity – says sales are down this year – squeezed, he says, at both ends.

“The older generation, which traditionally would contact old friends each year, is being put off by the new postage costs. The younger generation, which does everything online, isn’t interested in physically sending a card. It’s a real problem for the sector,” he says.

One card provider said they feared that in 10 years card sales will be consigned to history as people “simply move on”.

But Sharon Little, who runs the Greeting Card Association, is not so pessimistic. She agrees that the cost of postage has become a major factor, but says overall sales are expected to hold up this year with buyers choosing to hand deliver rather than posting.

“Last year we saw sales of single cards actually go up from £125m to £130m, while around 900m were sold as part of box sets. But it is an increasingly fragmented market. With the likes of Primark selling cards, they are now so cheap that the card itself costs a fraction of the cost of sending it. Buyers have responded by increasingly delivering them themselves.”

Little is dismissive of the threat of the rise of the “hated” e-cards – which she says all the research shows people really dislike.

Despite this, e-cards are likely to have been a factor in lower traditional card sales – particularly in the corporate sector. This week it emerged that Edinburgh council became the latest institution to abandon paper cards and opt instead for electronic greetings.

One charity bucking the trend appears to be Oxfam. It told Guardian Money this week that its card sales are up 23%, although that may be down to its improved designs and the fact that it is better at advertising the point that all profits go to the charity.

It claims a survey it conducted found that 88% people are planning to send Christmas cards this year with just 5% choosing e-cards instead.

“Christmas cards are an incredibly important source of income for Oxfam, so sales figures really count. This year around 60p in every £1 from the sales will go directly to support our work, particularly preventing the spread of Ebola in west Africa,” a spokeswoman says.

In 1843 the first Christmas card was invented by civil servant Sir Henry Cole, who worked for the Royal Mail and, three years earlier, played a key role in helping introduce the Penny Post service. Only 1,000 of these cards were printed and sold for a shilling each.

A spokesman for Royal Mail said that, on average, people sent 17 cards last year – the same as in 2012 – and that its research indicated that two-thirds of people who sent cards last year will be sending the same number this year.

Greetings from Sreepur in Bangladesh

For several years Guardian Money has highlighted how little of the purchase price of Christmas cards goes to the charity concerned, but six years ago we found what we think is the best Christmas card ever – the charity receives 100% of the purchase price.

The Sreepur Village charity, two hours north of the Bangladesh capital, Dhaka, cares for up to 100 destitute women and 500 abandoned children. Started 25 years ago by former British Airways flight attendant Pat Kerr, it now helps fund itself from the sale of Christmas cards which are handmade and decorated by women in and around the village.

They are different from anything you will find on the high street. Buyers can hand over their money in the knowledge that the organisation has made a real difference in a country that often makes headlines for the wrong reasons. A pack of 16 cards costs £14.50, which includes UK postage and packing.

In 2009 Guardian Money visited the project and we were so impressed that we have promoted the Christmas cards ever since. In the last 18 months Sreepur has expanded to take on 170 children orphaned by the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse, mostly by finding them foster parents and supporting them financially. More than 1,130 garment workers were killed, crushed under eight storeys of concrete – 2,500 people were rescued from the building, but some suffered terrible injuries.

At the heart of the project is a paper-making facility. Women have been trained to produce it from locally grown jute. The high-quality paper, which is all handmade and has Fairtrade status, is then dyed in vibrant colours.

The cards are worked on by women from the local community, who decorate them in return for a living wage – money that makes a huge difference to their lives.

British Airways is a long-term corporate supporter. It flies the cards to the UK for free via its Bangladesh cargo operation. Volunteers in the UK collect and distribute them here. This ensures all the money spent on the cards goes directly to Sreepur.

For the village the Christmas cards are symbolic, as 25 December is when the children celebrate their collective birthday. Most do not know their true date of birth, as they often were abandoned by parents or other family who could no longer afford to feed them.

For more information on the project and to buy the cards go to sreepurcards.org. Cards are sent within 24 hours of the order being placed.