Party invitations that once came to mailboxes now arrive via email or Facebook, and calendar apps are stiff competition for physical datebooks. Smartphones give us more ways to keep in touch than ever.

But old-fashioned paper greeting cards, delivered via snail mail, remain a holiday staple.

Some consumers are opting out of an annual ritual they say is time-consuming and redundant when we share photos and status updates daily on social media. But for others, the idea of taking the time to exchange tangible tokens of holiday cheer is more appealing than ever at a time when buzzing and pinging digital devices never seem to cease demanding our attention. That’s true even if finding the perfect card now involves sitting at a laptop, editing digital photos and clicking through dozens of template designs.

Sales of greeting cards have been fairly stable in the U.S. over the past five or six years, with consumers buying around 6.5 billion greeting cards and 1.6 billion holiday cards per year, said Peter Doherty, executive director of the Greeting Card Association. Those figures don’t include custom photo cards many families order.

But that stability is an improvement after several years of declining sales, Doherty said.

“People were starting to use email as a replacement, but over time they found they weren’t making the same meaningful connection,” he said.

Not everyone has returned to paper. Susan Wojcik, 43, of Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, estimates she only receives about a 10th of the cards she used to, though she doesn’t particularly miss them and stopped sending them herself about five years ago.

“I keep in touch so many other ways,” Wojcik said.

But those who continue to send holiday greetings on paper tend to be particularly drawn to the idea of a physical object with a personal sentiment, according to makers and sellers of greeting cards.

Carolina Ojeda, 27, of Little Village, who was shopping for cards for close family and friends Tuesday in the Lincoln Park area, said she enjoys picking out cards and wouldn’t want to break the tradition by going digital.

“I’m very old-school,” said Ojeda, who looks forward to receiving holiday cards in the mail too.

“That’s the cheer of Christmas,” she said.

Even a wave of enthusiasm for e-cards a few years ago subsided as consumers found them “too fleeting,” said Patrick Priore, chief merchant at Chicago-based Paper Source.

The biggest fans of e-cards tend to be people who also send lots of paper cards and want one more way to keep in touch, said Lindsey Roy, chief marketing officer at Hallmark Greetings.

Lydia Fields, 31, of Lincoln Park, said she’s starting to receive more holiday cards as her friends have started having kids but few, if any, arrive by email.

“I think we all like a good old-fashioned card,” Fields said.

Roy thinks the lasting appeal of paper cards comes from being “an antidote to too much digital.”

When a card arrives in the mail, it shows someone put time and effort into choosing the design and sending it, said Cindy Magder, 46, of Lincoln Park, who sends friends and relatives custom-printed cards with a family photo each year.

“It’s not a gift, but it feels like it is,” Magder said. “I feel like I’m special if someone thought to send it.”