Features and blogging

Spoke to Dad just now. He was three quarters of the way through his Christmas card list and wilting slightly. He said that, thanks to it having been a bit of a big year for him, he’s had a lot more news to impart and so the whole process has taken a little longer. I suggested that for the remainder he print out a note and put it in with the last few envelopes.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is the only chance I get to catch up with some people, so I like to make the effort and use my handwriting,’ (which, for the record, is lovely, quite unlike mine).
Cards are a ritual that I also enjoy for the same reasons and I always get on with them quite early, but it does freak some people out to receive them so soon in the month: sometimes it just freaks them out full stop.
’Don’t worry,’ I’ve been telling those who have been asking, at this stage, for my address. No reciprocation is needed because, as Dad said, cards are a habit that we card-writers love to indulge in, our own festive ritual. Me, I don’t need one back if a person doesn’t feel the same, not at all.
I do feel there’s a lot of family history associated with Christmas cards. To me the business of writing them is as festive as my late mum’s homemade mince pies, my aunt’s amazing and essential sausage rolls, all those Quality Street wrappers lying around, and the reliable weight of a tangerine in a stocking.
When I sit down each year to write them, three family anecdotes come to mind:
1 How Mum always threatened to make up her own round robin detailing the fictional anti-talents of her rubbish family – how us girls were falling in and out of delinquency, how Dad had taken up smoking, how we were all just clinging on by a thread (we weren’t, but she so wanted to send a rogue one out). Me, I love getting a proper Christmas letter, so if you’ve always sent me one, please don’t ever stop.
2 Mum, again, and how her writing got worse and worse as the card-chore wore on, until she was just scribbling a slanty dash of biro next to Dad’s considered angles, like signing off homework slips or cheques.
3 Also Mum again, and how she (and Dad) attacked the cards from 22 Dec onwards like tax returns, finally arriving at a hand-brake finish a day later, then pulling on coats and launching into a pitch-black Cornish night to hand-deliver the cards all around the village like some determined renegade coal-giver. She (they, if they both went) would stagger home several large sherries later then collapse on the sofa. It would all be a repeat of the London process, which would have taken place a few days before.

Ah but cards: I so love them. Please don’t worry if I send you one, it’s just a ritual. And if you haven’t got one yet it’s probably because I’m seeing you. And if you don’t get one at all but would like one, just let me know and I’ll put you on next year’s list.