Annual Christmas Card Results

Annual Christmas Card Results

Christmas 2013 delivered 58 cards to our house, not including family photos and letters. Several couples of friends took this season to announce their marriages—after years or decades of living together in faithful, committed relationships—made possible by an increasing number of states in the good ole U.S. of A. legalizing same-gender marriage.

This year secular cards (34) outnumbered religiously-themed cards (24). Only one robin—usually ubiquitous here in Britain—slipped through our letter box. Also down were cards displaying dogs or cats or both, while deer increased. Just two Santas showed up; one was riding a bicycle, which along with several other biking illustrations paid homage to our general mode of transportation. There was a thin smattering of Christmas trees, red post boxes, snowscapes, snow people, “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” and various seasonal greetings, including “God Jul” from friends in Norway. But topping the secular batch was a 1920’s flapper wishing us “Merry Christmas” from none other than a Church of Scotland Elder.

Less than a dozen cards had any glitter, and only two of them were religious: a snow angel, and a church in some woods with its windows lit up for Christmas Eve and a horse-drawn sleigh approaching. Real-world churches included the Lincoln Cathedral, down south in England, and the First United Methodist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana, also down south.

Among the religious cards, several don’t pass the scriptural litmus test: one card—from a Presbyterian minister no less—specifically mentions “innkeepers,” and that one and three others contain “stables.” (See the November 26, 2012, blog article, “The house where Jesus was born.”) Four cards portray the Holy Family as white Northern Europeans, while only two of the four sets of magi—all non-Biblically trios—are persons of color. The true colors are the other way around: The Holy Family is dark-skinned (like in traditional Orthodox icons) with Middle-Eastern features, and the “foreigners” are, say, Japanese Buddhists, Korean Methodists, Nigerian Catholics, Pakistani Muslims, Californian New-Agers, and British Humanists.

Every card depicts an image, and sometimes the artist gets her or his due credit. A colorful collage of the wise people “Bearing Gifts” by Barbara Prout adorns a card, the proceeds of which support WaterAid, “a charity working with some of the poorest people in Africa and Asia to improve their own water supplies and sanitation, using practical and low cost technologies.”

Rainbow-colored angels fill the outside and inside of a card produced by Minnesota artist Kevyn K. Riley, one of many cards printed with vegetable-base ink. Among the deer cards from dear friends is a print of an Illauliutit (Caribou Herd) by Meelia Kelly, an Inuit artist in Canada. And a tandem-bike-riding couple sending us best wishes for Christmas and the New Year is from an original painting by Josef Habeler, Mouth Painter, and produced by Mouth and Foot Painting Artists, based in London.

While the number of cards received this year is significantly down from past years, the number of charities supported by the purchase of these cards is way up, including Barbardo’s, “helping change children’s lives”; The British Kidney Patient Association, “improving life for kidney patients”; Cancer Research UK; Focus Ireland, “creating homes together”; The Leprosy Mission, which “seeks to provide medical care, community-based rehabilitation and employment for people affected by leprosy and other disabilities”; Macmillan Cancer Support; The Marie Keating Foundation, “making cancer less frightening by enlightening”; The Royal National Lifeboat Institution, “saving lives since 1824”; Shelter, a housing charity in the UK; the Woodland Trust, which conserves forests in the UK; and Save the Children and other charitable organizations to help children. One particular card—portraying ethnically-authentic shepherds, although the sheep appear suspiciously white-washed—is jointly produced by 31 different charities.

Several cards issue alerts as well as glad tidings. On the back of one card it says, “Warning: This card is not a toy and is unsuitable for children under 36 months. Contains small parts.” Yet on the front is an Edwardian snow scene featuring a Post Office vehicle driving dangerously close to a boy on a bicycle who is not wearing a helmet.

Another sparkling design offering “Christmas Wishes” stipulates: “WARNING! Not suitable for small children under 36 months due to small parts. Please retain for future reference.” I am never throwing away this card.

Finally, Perfect Moments produces a card “to someone special at Christmas” that states on the back—in rather small print—“Warning: This product is not a toy. Not suitable for under three years unless supervised, due to small parts and/or sharp points which may constitute a choking hazard and/or risk of laceration.” I’ll make sure I’m properly supervised and wearing a face mask and rubber gloves if I recycle this card anytime within the next three years.

A man walks into a nail salon

A man walks into a nail salon

A man walks into a nail salon. He’s in his 80’s, is legally blind, and shares a house with one of his children in my parish area of Glasgow.

This man has long since retired as an engineer. His career started in the early years of the Second World War, and his job was on the list of reserved occupations. But later in the war he was called up for active service in the air force, and he was given the choice of either training for six months to become a pilot or six weeks to become a gun operator on a bomber plane. Young and eager to get going, he chose the latter—although he told me he wished he had learned to fly because then after the war he could have secured a well-paying job as a civilian airline pilot. Instead he stayed on the ground, or rather underneath it as a mine surveyor.

Now a widower with great-grandchildren, this man is pretty self-sufficient given his age and visual impairment. He takes care of most things around the house whenever his son is away on business, and he gets help for the few things he can’t see to do by himself.

One of the tasks he needs assistance with but doesn’t want to bother his children about is cutting his nails. And so he goes to a nail salon.

The first nail salon he went into, years ago, he noticed all the other clients were women. So he asked the receptionist, a young Korean man, if they did men’s nails. The receptionist assured him that they did and after giving him a seat proceeded to trim his nails and buff them.

The man then saw an older gentleman come out from the back of the salon and speak to the young man in a loud authoritarian voice. The man didn’t have a clue as to what was being said because they were speaking what he assumed was Korean. But he realized the older gentleman was the young mans’ father and clearly adamant about something, something involving the son who had just finished doing the man’s nails.

The man figured he was not supposed to be in this place after all and got up to pay for his nail job before leaving. When he went to the reception counter, the young man said to him, “There is no charge. Elderly people do not pay.”

The man has been going there to have his nails done ever since. He’s never paid any money, but each time he walks into that nail salon he brings a container of chocolate or cookies for the staff to enjoy on their tea breaks.