Question: Sure, we love text messaging. It's cheap, private and an immediate way to communicate with someone. But what about sending holiday greetings this way? "Happy Thanksgiving: 2day is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice." (We got that one twice). "Happy Thanksgiving 2 you and yours."

Whatever happened to sending a card in the mail?

Answer: "Everything is fast now," says Colleen Rickenbacher, a business etiquette expert and author of "Be On Your Best Business Behavior." "We move faster. We expect people to respond back to us faster. Simple and fast. That's our motto now."

Rickenbacher believes it's bad etiquette to send cards this way. Unless you are a kid, agrees Jodi R.R. Smith, owner of Mannersmith Etiquette Consulting in Boston. She worries the tradition of sending holiday greeting cards is going by the wayside.

"The thought behind something is reflected upon the effort put into it," she says. "If I get a beautiful card and someone has taken the time to add a handwritten note, that shows they are really into the holiday spirit and really want to communicate with me. If someone sends me a text message with merry Christmas, that says I cared enough to do the very least."

But Robin Abrahams, aka Miss Conduct, an etiquette columnist for the Boston Globe, says "it's absolutely fine to do it."

"You can't put a text message on your mantel piece," she says. "It's not a substitute for a card, but it's completely fine because cards aren't required. It's fine not to send holidays cards greetings at all."

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