Choosing individual Christmas cards for close family usually takes me far more time than choosing presents. This year's offerings sported either modern designs trying too hard to look different from last year's or otherwise-nice festive scenes ruined by too much glitter. As disappointing as the designs were, they were nowhere near as off-putting as the verbose, saccharine messages within, which, trying too hard to be heartfelt, ended up achieving the opposite in effusions of cloying sentiment.
When I explained the above to a friendly shop assistant, who was trying to help me, she declared: âWell, that's just what you have to do at Christmas.â
I replied that this was not so and that in previous years I had managed (after protracted searches that grow longer each year) to find cards with briefer, more-tasteful greetings.
At length, I settled on a couple: one with an aureate Christmas tree but a simple, restrained message within, and one with an image of children's singing carols, marred only by having A Special Message emblazoned garishly on the front. Surprisingly, given the precedents to hand, there was no such message within; and this gave me the space to write a sincere one of my own, which is always preferable.
Blank cards do exist, of course, but this year they were thin on the ground. And cards in packs, which are often better, leave me with multiple copies of the same designs and a feeling of having been wasteful â if, as is often the case, I see no prospect of using them the following year, when I am back to choosing cards.