Buzzing around Yorkshire, our columnist’s days are never the same…
November is upon us and the shops are full of Christmas cheer, the TV ads started what feels like months ago and I’m in a dilemma. Should this be the year I stop writing Christmas cards?
I’m no Scrooge. I’ve written before of my love of everything about the festive season. From the fairy lights to the first glug of Baileys, it all fills me with seasonal cheer (especially the Baileys) but I hate, hate, hate writing Christmas cards.
Now I know many people love to settle on the sofa with a pack of Clintons’ festive variety to enjoy a cosy evening handwriting messages to all their friends and loved ones. Accompanied by a bit of Michael Bublé and a tipple or two, it all sounds idyllic; but the reality is, it’s just another chore to me.
I’m in awe of those people who post early and even craft ‘round robin’ missives – with photos – to fill us in on what their gang has been up to all year. How are they even that organised?
While it’s very nice to receive them, I’m afraid I always put off the card writing until the realisation that the last post to New Zealand is 4pm that afternoon and it’s now or never if the lovely lady I once interviewed on a TV assignment to Auckland in 1996 is to get her usual ‘Happy Christmas, hope it’s a good one’ from the other side of the world. I even put ‘Christine from Yorkshire TV’ in brackets in case she has forgotten who I am, and she probably has!
Would you believe being called Christine is also a problem at Christmas card writing time? At least it is when you are as slapdash as me and bored witless by card 80. When the Baileys kicks in and my hand is hurting, I tend to wander into autopilot and forget I’m not writing my signature. To my shame a ‘Happy Christine, love Christine’ greeting is NOT uncommon, so my friends tell me.
My 86-year-old mum won’t hear of not sending cards to everyone she has ever met. She posts off copious missives every year and spends a fortune on stamps, saying that if she doesn’t ‘people will think I’ve popped off!’ She’s actually right. The one year she inadvertently missed off some old friends who’d changed their address, I received an email to my work, solemnly querying: ‘We are hoping that Mum is still with us as we didn’t hear from her at Christmas?’
There’s no doubt sending Christmas cards is going out of fashion, particularly with th
