Christmas cards still matter

Not enough of us go to church during Advent, hardly anybody under the age of 60 makes their own Christmas pudding and when was the last time you kissed anybody, other than your great aunt Doris (when ‘you’ were nine, I hasten to add), under the mistletoe?

It is true Yuletide habits are shifting - how else can we explain some people dishing up Yorkshire Pudding alongside their turkey and pigs in blankets - but we are not quite ready to give up on the sprouts and The Snowman just yet.

Christmas cards, they say, are in terminal decline right across the world, largely because a) many of us cannot be mithered digging out the address book, if we still have one, and b) because wishing your Facebook friends a jolly holiday in a single, one line post is much easier than vainly writing ‘we really hope to see you sometime in the New Year’ at least 50 times.

For most of us, writing cards in December is as tedious as mowing the lawn or repainting the garden fence but it really needs to be done if you value human contact of any meaningful description.

But it is still the only internationally recognised way of telling people who you don’t see very often that you really do care about them, especially if you take the time to fill in at least one side of the card with inane detail from the last 12 months of your humdrum life.

Another theory on why cards are less popular than they used to be is the cost of stamps and cards.

Yes, stamps are far dearer than they were in the not-so-distant past but you try to get anything delivered the next day for 67p and see how far you get.

Despite all the well documented issues facing our postal system - Royal Mail still offers incredible value, especially at this, the most expensive time of the year.

This year we have received as many cards as we have done in a long time, so I am pretty confident that some of us will be scribbling pithy messages to passing acquaintances for years to come yet.