The Joys of Christmas!

It’s a Christmas tradition that we vow we will not continue every year, sending or giving Christmas cards to our nearest and dearest, neighbours, friends and a host of people with whom we communicate just once a year.

Yet around the first week of December the first card arrives in our mail, and that’s it! Our promises, or threats to do away with Christmas cards disappear and out comes last year’s list, ready to be copied, perhaps modified, but for the sole purpose of sending cards once more.

To be honest, I enjoy both sending and receiving cards; my wife says she doesn’t have the same enthusiasm for them as she used to. But then again, what would Christmas be without them?

Admittedly, many are exchanged by hand now, or popped through letter boxes, what with second class post coming in at 50p a time. Then, there are the notices put through the door by the postman that there is something to collect at the local sorting office, which we always reckon is a card that didn’t bear sufficient value stamps. I am afraid that with a £1 charge imposed on top of whatever is due on the stamp, that they remain at the sorting office, and we will never know whether we have dropped off someone’s list this year, or whether their card was one of those resting indefinitely in the care of Royal Mail.

But with the last day for posting just nine days away, I did find myself in the card shop today choosing which cards we would send this year. Next task is to work out how many we need commit to post, and how many we can safely deliver.

The tedious bit is yet to come, addressing envelopes and writing messages of affection in the cards themselves.

Think I know how we will be spending the weekend, and despite all those threats to kick cards into touch, all of those messages of affection will be written with feeling. Just as we will delight in opening those we anticipate receiving.