CHRISTMAS GREETINGS TO ONE AND ALL!

Christmas 8
by

With the Covid 19 pandemic threatening to drive a huge wedge between us all this Christmas, taking the time to send a personally hand-written Christmas card is an opportunity we really shouldn’t miss.

Christmas.jpgRecently, BBC Business reported Howard Mustoe pulled together a number of different opinions on the subject.
“The very act of putting pen to paper is very personal,” says handwriting expert Emma Bache. “It shows that an individual has taken enough care and enough thought. The much slower process of hand writing a card is much more intimate and more thoughtful.”
Christmas cards bring little gems of positivity amongst our post, which these days is mostly unwanted junk mail or bills!
Lindsey Nathan who started the One More Card campaign back in 2017 to encourage children to write to a lonely older neighbour or relative thinks that sending Christmas cards this year is more important than ever. “It’s even more poignant,” she says. “We all know now what it feels like to be lonely and isolated because we’ve all been put in that situation this year.”
John Procter, founder of High Street chain Scribbler agrees: “When you see something that’s handwritten, it’s as close as you are going to get to seeing someone.”
Although there’s a hope amongst greeting card publishers that even more people will be wanting to send cards this year, lockdowns and the closure of some specialist card shops have added to fears that people simply won’t be able to buys all the Christmas cards that they need.

Christmas-7.jpgMichael Johnson, Managing Director of greeting card publishers Card Connection is a definite voice of hope.
“The British send almost a billion Christmas cards a year, more per person than any other nation, so the desire is definitely there,” he explains. “We’ve certainly seen our like-for-like Christmas card sales boom this year, but then we are fortunate that we supply the convenience sector, which has remained open in lockdown and so benefited from more people shopping locally during the pandemic.”
“While cards, like everything else, can be bought online, more than 90% are still sold in shops in the UK, fortunately there are lots of places you can buy them, so maybe this year we all need to remember that they are a perfect way to share some much-needed Christmas cheer.”