A return to the Christmas Carol Audit

For the first time in a while I went to several carol services this Christmas. I've previously blogged about which carols are most likely to be sung - my most recent post was in 2019. I went to four carol services this year, so felt that gave me a useful number of data sources. There was some significant variety as well.

The four singalong events were:

1. Carols in the Pub, at The Grange Pub in Cardiff, organised by Grace Church 
2. The Grange Gardens Carol Service, organised by the Cardiff Council Park Rangers in conjunction with Friends of Grange Gardens and other community groups. Music was provided by the brass band of the Grangetown Corps of the Salvation Army with input from Grace Church and Eglwys Anghor.
3. Christmas Eve midnight communion service at Christchurch, an Anglican Church in Bayston Hill, near Shrewsbury (where I was spending Christmas)
4. Christmas Day service at Barnabas Community Church in Shrewsbury

Carols in the Pub at The Grange

Services at Christchurch and Barnabas have featured in previous audits, so there is some consistency there. The formats were a bit different. Carols in the Pub featured an online song sheet, played in request order, with a reprise of the most popular songs. 

Grange Gardens

There were some new songs featured in the combined set lists of the services. These were mainly popular Christmas songs, like We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Jingle Bells. However, the Anghor church led a carol in Welsh at the Grange Gardens service, called Hwiangwrdd Mair (Suia'r Gwynt), which translates as Mary's Lullaby (Gentle Breeze). There are now over 40 carols and songs on my database, with 21 only featuring in one service. 

Christmas Eve midnight service

Joy to the World was a popular choice this year, featuring in three of the services. On Christmas Day we sang an 'updated' version with an additional chorus that was completely unnecessary. There were also a few more added lines in a 'bridge' in the song which borrowed the melody from Ode to Joy. This may have been an homage to the climactic scene at the end of the well known Christmas movie, Die Hard, but it irritated me. It's bad enough when people take it upon themselves to 'improve' classics, but then to cheat and use someone else's tune seems insultingly lazy.

Christmas Day service

Yet again, the most popular carol, featuring in all four services, was O Come All Ye Faithful. This was already the leading song in my little audit and has now extended its lead. In fact, of the 13 services I have listed on my spreadsheet, there was only one service where O Come All Ye Faithful didn't feature. 

Here is the top ten table, with this year's carols included:

Good Christians All Rejoice is a mainstay of the Christchurch midnight communion services - I have three of these services listed in my audit now and it has featured three times. In the Bleak Midwinter is my least favourite carol in the list. With any luck, some other carol will get really popular and replace it in the top ten!

See previous Christmas Carol audits along with over a decade of Christmas Card Audits on my dedicated page!

The Tenth Annual Christmas Card Audit

It's hard to believe I've done this for 10 Christmasses in a row, but here we are - the 10th ACCA. Links to all the previous audits are on this page where you can mourn for lost categories like "Dogs in Santa Hats", "Llamas", "Christmas Elves" and so on. There are some new categories this year. For the first time I have counted puns and also greetings in Welsh. There is a surprise return for the "Hares and Moon" combo and in the religious themed cards a continued absence for the Shepherds who visited the Holy Family on Christmas night.

I will be posting some cards of note in a future post. However, to liven up this post I am going to include cards illustrated by children. These are all schools fundraising cards, and I really like them. Hopefully the children will find it encouraging that their cards feature on my blog. (If their parents show them!)

By Alba

And so to the audit...

Total number of cards: 91 (an increase on last year!)

Hand-made / home-produced cards: 8

Cards designed by kids: 3

Cards with glitter: 12 (back up to a similar number to a couple of years ago. The 'glitter is evil' warnings seems to have worn off.)

Cards sold in aid of charity (or fundraising): 53

Total number of charities represented: 40 (lower than last year where one 32-charity card artificially inflated the number)

Most popular charity represented: Cancer Research Campaign with 7 cards. This ends the dominance of British Heart Foundation who were the most popular charity for 3 years in a row. BHF were joint second in the list with 5 cards, alongside MIND, the Marie Keating Foundation, and the Traidcraft/Christian Aid/CAFOD/SCIAF combination

Charity card cause breakdown (this is approximate because some cards covered more than one type of cause, and not every charity explains what it does)

Cards raising money for cancer charities: 24

Cards raising money for other health issues: 34

Animal charities: 0

Children's charities: 5

Overseas development charities: 11

By Nancy - I thought this looked very cool!

THEMES

Religious themes

Religious-themed cards: 19 - Despite the overall number of cards being up, this was a drop of one card from the 2020 ACCA. Again it meant less than a quarter of the cards we received had a religious design.

Cards featuring the Nativity: 12

Three kings: 2

The shepherds: 0 (for the second year running!)

Angels: 1 (after zero in 2020)

'Cartoony' religious: 3 (after zero in 2020)

Other themes

Santa: 6 (another strong showing for Mister Beardie)

Penguins: 4

Bears: 0 (this used to be a very popular category - completely disappeared this year!)

Reindeer: 6 (there was a big debate whether to include a moose called Chris in this category, but categories are specific for a reason and moose are not reindeer!)

Christmas trees: 6

Christmas food: 3

Christmas decorations: 4

Robins: 3

Sheep: 2 (both of which had puns on the front. Good showing for the sheep!)

Dogs with or without Santa hats: 0 (this fluctuates year on year and this year was a nil year)

Other animals with or without Santa hats: 6 (A range of animals were represented including a dinosaur. Do dinosaurs count? Are they animals? Yes, they count!)

Winter scene/scenery: 8

Snow & snowflakes: 4

Snowpeople: 8 (a massive jump in this category this year)

Licensed characters: 6 (4 featuring Snoopy and Peanuts characters, and another 2 featuring the Snowman by Raymond Briggs - which also got counted in the Snowpeople category. Here's a note on inconsistencies though. I didn't count the Snoopy cards in the dogs category, which I've only just realised while writing this up...)

Hares & Moons: 1 (returning category!)

Holly and wreaths: 1 (a large drop on 2020)

There were no cards referencing the pandemic this year. Everyone is heartily fed up with it.

By Robyn - neseg ar gymraeg!

CARD FRONT MESSAGES

Word 'Christmas' on the front: 25 (of which only 2 were religious)

"Seasons Greetings": 4

Mentions "Jesus": 0 (sad for Baby Jee!)

"Peace": 0 (sad for everybody!)

Bible verse: 1

Lines or titles of Christmas carols: 4 (big drop on 2020)

Lines or titles of Christmas songs: 3

Message in Welsh: 2

Puns: 8 (Cathy suggested we count these this year!)

In conclusion

There are perennial themes, and there are some that wax and wane considerably year on year. It feels like the number of religious themed cards are slowly declining. They tend to the more serious-looking cards that we receive and maybe people want to send a bit of fun in the post at Christmastime. 

I was really surprised to get no cards featuring bears this year. In the first audit almost ten per cent of the cards featured bears, and although in subsequent years, there have only been a handful, there has always been at least one. Until this year. It would appear the seasonal ursine population has gone extinct. 

Now that I have ten years worth of data I am wondering about producing a meta-analysis, but that will probably require me creating a spreadsheet, so I will have to see if I have time to do that.

Thank you to everyone who sent us Christmas cards this year and who have helped keep this audit going!

The Big Annual Christmas Card Audit 2020

I've been running this audit since 2012 and it is easily the most popular feature on this blog. Which is a bit weird, but, hey, I'm all for giving people what they want.

I'm going to proffer my thanks to Cathy for her assistance in the audit this year before we get into the audit proper, rather than tacking it on like an afterthought. Thanks Cathy!

Here's a picture of our Christmas cards in the "Audit Basket" before the audit began. 

And so on to the audit! As ever new categories are marked with an asterisk. There are also some returning categories including the much-missed Dogs in Santa Hats! I've marked returning categories as RC.

Total number of cards: 81 (down from 84 in 2019)

Hand-made / home-produced cards: 7

Cards designed by kids: 6

Cards with glitter: 8 (a reduction from 13 in 2019 - perhaps reflecting new 'glitter is evil' messaging)

RC ~ M&S Cards: 4

Cards sold in aid of charity (or fundraising): 48

Total number of charities represented: a massive 60, but this was boosted by one card that was raising funds that would be split between 32 charities

Most popular charity represented: British Heart Foundation with 11 cards, making it 3 years in a row for BHF

Charity card cause breakdown (this is approximate because some cards covered more than one type of cause)

Cards raising money for cancer charities: 19

Cards raising money for other health issues: 37

Animal charities: 2

Children's charities: 15

Overseas development charities: 12

THEMES

Religious-themed cards: 20 - this was down from 24 in 2019 and means that less than a quarter of the cards we received had a religious design

Cards featuring the Nativity: 15

Three kings: 2

The shepherds: 0 (I think this is the first time we have recorded zero)

These themes all recorded zero entries as well: The star of Bethlehem. Angels. Choirboys, 'Cartoony' religious

Other themes

Santa: 8 (big increase, up from just 3 in 2019)

Penguins: 4.5 (one card was a penguin and a snowman in equal prominence)

Bears: 2

Deer/reindeer: 6

Christmas trees: 8

Christmas food: 2

Robins: 2

Sheep: 2

RC ~ Dogs: 3 (of which 2 had Santa hats!)

Other animals with or without Santa hats: 1

Winter scene/scenery: 5

Snowpeople: 0.5 (see the penguin category for explanation)

Licensed characters: 2 (although I suspect 1 was used without a license)

Holly and wreaths: 7 (up from zero in 2019, so a big trend change there)

*Sport: 1

*Christmas present(s):1

*Cars laden for Christmas: 2

*Reference to the Pandemic: 1

Themes that didn't register any cards this year: Christmas Elf, Christmas decorations, Donkeys, Snow / snowflakes, Llamas, Hares and Moons, Mistletoe, Owls

Messages on front of card 

Cards that mention 'Christmas' on the front: 32 (of which only 2 were religious)

"Seasons Greetings": 1

Mentions "Jesus": 1

RC ~ "Peace": 2

Bible verse: 1

Lines or titles of Christmas carols: 10

Lines or titles of Christmas songs: 3

So what conclusions am I drawing from this year? Santa was more popular than he's been for a while. In terms of the Christmas story people chose to send us Kings rather than Shepherds. There's always been a disparity in favour of the Kings but it was a real surprise to get no Shepherds at all. It would appear the 'Hares looking at the full moon' theme is over. But in it's place we got two very similar designs that will get their own blog post soon. Yet again, I'm surprised how few animal charities are represented among the fundraising cards, but it feels like the percentage of cards that are fundraising cards is going up - it was over half the cards this year.

I will be posting some of our favourite cards over the next few days. Thank you everyone who sent us one.

The long list of previous audits

2012
2013
2014
2015 plus 10 favourite cards, senders analysis and Bible verse breakdown
2016 plus favourite cards
2017 plus a dozen favourites and Christmas carol audit
2018 plus 15 favourites

2019 (original version) (updated version) and 12 favourites