The 12 cards of Christmas

I have decided not to do a Christmas card audit this year. It's something I might do again in future, but I felt like a Christmas off. 

However, I haven't dispensed with all my blogging traditions - here are a selection of the cards we received this year. It was tough picking just 12 from the pile. I have only included cards that could scan easily on the flatbed, so you will just have to picture the 3D musical R2-D2 card with flashing lights that Connor gave me in your minds eye!

First up is a card that just made me smile. Santa has upgraded his transport - to a big red bus!

I'm never sure whether "peace" counts as a religious theme or not. It felt very apt this year with some of the horrors grinding on in other parts of the world, particularly in the middle east. I really liked the design of this peace dove. 

A more definite religious theme - the three "kings" (AKA wise men or magi). The curly shoes of the king in the middle amused me. 

I love cards designed by kids. This one of robins sat on a goalpost (I think) was by Delilah. It was printed as a fund-raiser for her school. 

And this drawing by Jowan was hand done. Got to say this is a contender for my very favourite card this year. A duck-billed platypus in a Santa hat? What's not to love? (Although I don't think platypuses quack, despite their duck-bills.)

Keeping on an antipodean fauna theme, here's a tree of koala bears from my friend Jon in Oz.

This card was given to us 11 months early by my friend Sian. It's a pun and a moose.

And another moose! Including this card is a bit of a cheat because it's one of the ones that I gave to Cathy. It's designed by Cardiff-based artist Ana Palamar. I liked his wellies. 

More animals. This time it's some sheep saying "Baa humbug!" I liked the stripy sheep who actually looks like a humbug. 

But nobody does humbug as well as the Modern Toss cartoonists. This gave me a belly laugh when I first saw it. 

Cathy's card to me. Very cute. 

And then the final card of the selection. This one really had it all. A pun. Camels! Wearing Santa hats! Fair play to my Mum, she ticked all the boxes with this one.

As ever, a massive thank you to everyone who sent us a Christmas card. If it wasn't featured in the post, I can promise you it was very much appreciated.

Snack of the Month - we're going to eat the zoo, zoo, zoo

My final "Snack of the Month" for 2022 is a packet of cute animal-shaped biscuits that make up the "Leibniz Zoo". These are another Snack of the Month that was sourced by Cathy, who nabbed the last bag on the shelf in our local Lidl. 

The cute giraffe on the front caught her eye. Packaging design for the win!

There's a cute design on the back along with a recommendation for deer snacks - which is a tenuous enough link to Christmas to make this a seasonal snack!

There is a decent volume of bite-size biscuits in the bag. I was reasonably impressed by how many were in there. 

And the variety of shapes was impressive too. A proper zoo of creatures, including ducks! This is one of each type - but there were three or four of most of them. The duck was the rarest as the one in the picture was the sole one in the bag. There were lots of horses. 

As plain biscuits go, these were nice. They tested like a more buttery version of a rich tea biscuit. They weren't very sweet and they were good dunked in tea.

I won't be rushing back to the zoo, having tried these once. But I did really like the rhino biscuit - here's a close up to close the review!

10 cards from the ACCA2020

A selection of Christmas cards that we received for Christmas 2020. It's harder to make this selection than to do the actual audit!

One of the categories that we usually get a few entries in is "Christmas Food". Unusually this year we didn't get any cards of Christmas puddings or mince pies. We did, however get a picture of these adorable cupcakes.

(Pretty sure that says Merry Christmas, although the font makes it look like Messy Christmas at first glance.)

Staying on the theme of food, there's always a very good chance of your card making it into the selection for my blog if it includes a pun, as this one does. This card made me hungry every time I looked at it.

Speaking of puns, this year was the first time I got a card with a Welsh pun on it. Unfortunately I didn't say the greeting out loud until I had already asked what the joke was. Then I got the joke before the reply text arrived.

Some of these scans are a bit wonky and odd (like the one of E.T. there) because I set up my overhead scanner to scan one card and then tried to scan them all using it. This next card was the reason I set up the overhead scanner. If I'm a sucker for puns, I'm a ma-hoosive sucker for googly eyes.

That's tinsel on the bottom as well. I didn't know how it would work squashing it into a flatbed scanner. 

That card is the reason the ACCA2020 records 4.5 penguin cards and 0.5 Snowpeople cards. I couldn't assign it to just the one category.

Penguins are popular on Christmas cards, even though they aren't North Pole animals. They're cute though.

That one at the bottom right looks like he is shouting "Hooray!" Probably because he's been able to swivel his wings in an utterly unnatural direction for a penguin.

I always try to include at least one religious-themed card in the selection. Truthfully, they tend to be quite dull. However the following card was a bit different and the only card received this year to mention Jesus on the front.

The lettering is foil and shiny, but hasn't scanned very well. I couldn't get this to scan properly under the overhead scanner so resorted to the flatbed.

"Sport" was a new category this year, occasioned by a card from a fellow baseball card collector. This card has featured on my baseball card blog as well - it was my Christmas Day post.

For those who don't know, I collect baseball cards featuring Tony Gwynn (over 570 so far!), but this is the only one in my collection that's been doctored to show him in a Santa hat!

Talking of Santa hats, there was another returning category this year - dogs! We had two cards with pictures of dogs wearing Santa hats, but my favourite one had several hatless dogs on.

I must admit, it surprises even me that I chose to show off hatless dogs rather than behatted dogs, but that card's just too cute.

Another new category this year was 'References to the Pandemic'. We had one card in the category, and I really liked it. Everyone, meet Rudolph the Red Masked Reindeer.

And if that's got you humming a tune, this final card might well have the same effect. This was actually the card that Cathy gave me and as usual, she brought some strong game. A cute design, a cracking pun, and raccoons. Gotta love raccoons!

There's only the first line there, so I've added to it.

"Raccoon around the Christmas Tree

In the Christmas Party bins

Eating the trash so merrily

With our furry bandit grins."

Seriously, someone needs to make that into an actual song.

So those are 10 cards that I really liked from the ones we were sent this year. Many thanks to everyone who sent us a card. Look out for some forthcoming extra posts about Christmas cards coming soon.

A dozen to end the decade - 12 cards from the ACCA '19

The Christmas Card Audit has been thrown into chaos with the arrival of a card yesterday, after publication, with important results-altering artwork. I will update that post shortly while bearing Cathy's admonishment that "I told you that you published it too early!"

Meanwhile here are some cards that arrived in time to be counted first time round.

I know some people send us cards just to see if they can get a mention in the Annual Christmas Card Audit blogpost. Talk about observation changing the system being observed! (That's a real known scientific principle, folks) Even more competitive are the people who go out of their way to pick cards they want to get featured in my eclectic selection blog post that follows the ACCA, when I scan the cards I want to mention, or liked the most. Some people even write in the card that they are doing this. It amuses me.

We've got some really cool cards here, and a few random ones. To kick off, this year I kept a note of "animals" cards that weren't deer, sheep, robins, penguins, bears, donkeys, llamas, dogs in Santa hats, or hares posing in the light of the moon. You'd think there wouldn't be many animals left. Well, I adored this hand-drawn piggy in a Santa hat.

The numbers are meant to be a countdown to Christmas, I think. Anyway, I thought he was great, and I'm including it here even though Anna only addressed the card to Cathee [sic].

Another animal, and this was a first for us, was a Christmassy narwhal.

What's Christmassy about a narwhal? Well there is that carol, isn't there? You know the one I mean! The First Narwhal! (Grooooaaaaaaannnnnn.)  I also liked this card because he has a googly eye. You can't beat googly eyes.

Cathy and I both gave each other cards featuring animals celebrating Christmas. See if you can guess who gave who these.

Deer or reindeer have their own category in the ACCA every year because there are so many of them. But this was new, and also won the 'Most Scientifically Accurate and Educational' category.

Cathy's cousin Adam blessed us with that. At first I thought it was showing us cuts of meat off a reindeer, so I was a bit relieved to see it was "just" the skeleton.

Speaking of scientifically accurate cards, this rainbow is slightly colour deficient. However I did really like it. I think "Yay! Christmas!" is probably the best wording on a Christmas card yet.

Santa wasn't very popular among the cards we received this year, but I quite liked this glittery card of Santa (or several Santas) learning to ice skate. The one bottom right is saying "I've fallen, and can't get up."

Time for the obligatory religious card in this selection. It is sometimes a struggle to find one worth including because they are often so boring. Cathy noted this year they almost all seemed to be exclusively in a blue palette. However, there was one that stood out, that was handmade by our friend Ailsa. It's a kind of batik and shows the magi following the star.

Another Christmas tradition is the special Christmas song. Terrorvision released a belter of a Christmas song this year and when Cathy bought the download, the band sent her a Christmas card as part of the deal. Had to include it here!

One person who made it very clear they were aiming for the blog post when she gave us this card was my sister in law, Abby. To be fair, this was an excellent card as she knows how much I love the Statue of Liberty. I thought this was very cute, so there you go, Abs, if you're reading this, you made it!

And finally, we have always had an ACCA category of "Christmas Food". Usually, it's puddings or mince pies, but this year it was exclusively sprouts. First off, we have Chris's effort which he claims he picked to try and get sprouts as a category in the ACCA. It was also slightly vulgar and the first card I've ever had that wished me a "Merry Fartmas". The sprout in the middle is on a small spring for that 3D effect which doesn't scan very well.

And then, the card that ticked the most boxes this year. Terrible pun - check. Personalisation - check. Welsh greeting - check (the only Welsh card in the ACCA this year). And it's the other sprout card, this time from our friends Sara and Leanne.

And that's the dozen for 2019! Thank you so much to everyone who sent us cards and newsletters this year!

I promised you some Christmas cards, so here you go

Cathy has been a star and scanned in some of the Christmas cards that we received in 2015. (Read the annual audit here) So, for your enjoyment, here are the 10 cards that really stood out for us this year. Enjoy!

First up - one of the dogs in Santa hats cards we got this year. He looks happy it's Christmas...

What could be better than a pug in a Santa hat? How about a dog driving a car while wearing a Santa hat?

Cathy says the one on the right is obviously meant to be me. What do you think?

(I only noticed when compressing these that he is kind of wearing Shrewsbury Town colours. Freaky.)

Anyway, we had some other snowmen (snowpeople?) too. I liked this snow family.

Want to get in my wife's good books for life? Draw her a Snoopy card! The kid who did this was 8. She did a better job than I would have.

I quite liked this deer card. It's cute and it also has a beveled edge like a stamp making it feel much posher. Die-cut cards aren't that common so it stood out.

Googly eyes! Always a winner. A pun! Toast! Everything you would want on a card, here.

I always love cards that teach me something new. Here's a charity I have never heard of before: Perennial, the charity that cares for horticulturalists in need. (Loaded up large so you can click on it to read the text)

But in terms of charity logos, this, for the Roald Dahl Marvellous Children's Charity, wins hands down.

And finally, there is always one card that makes you think, 'What on earth...' This year's winner in that category has a back story and was in a good cause, but even so, was one of the strangest card designs I think we've ever received. (Again loaded as a larger file - click on it to see it in all its glory! Be warned, though. You can't unsee it.)

So, there you go. If any of your cards made the cut, then well done and thank you for sending us a card.

The big 2013 Christmas Card Audit

I did this for the first time last year, and that means I can be all uber-geeky and do like-for-like comparisons. I have further subdivided the themes to throw further light on what Christmas means in the minds of the people who make Christmas cards, and the people who buy them.

(Of course, it's not a truly scientific sample as it's based only on the people who gave us Christmas cards. If you're one of them, thank you.)

Total number of Christmas cards: 97 (last year's figure: 104)
Hand-made / home-produced cards: 7 (6) plus two designed by kids and printed by schools
Cards with magnets on: sadly none (last year: 1)

Cards sold in aid of charity: 44 (42)
Of which...
Traidcraft cards: 5 (down from 6 last year)
Oxfam cards: None (2 last year)
Main charity represented: Diabetes UK with 5 cards.
Total number of charities represented: 62 (up from 40 last year). This includes one card that raised funds for 30 different charities.
Marks and Spencer cards (new category): 12

Themes
Religious-themed cards: 33 (down from 37)
Cards featuring the Nativity: 15
The following Christmas story 'characters' appeared on cards too:
Three kings: 5 (down from 9)
The shepherds: 4 (up from 2)
The star of Bethlehem: 2 (up from 1)

Other themes (new categories asterisked)
'Peace': 2 (down from 4)
Santa: 10 (compared to 6 in 2012) plus one that was just several Santa hats
Penguins: 3 (down from 5)
Various cartoon bears: 2 (down from 12 bears in 2012)
Dogs in Santa Hats: None this year! (2 last year)
*Deer/reindeer: 6
*Christmas decorations: 4
*Christmas trees: 5
*Robins: 3
*Mistletoe: 2
*Winter scene/scenery: 7
Messages
Cards that mention 'Christmas' on the front: 35 (down from 45)
Like last year, many of the religious-themed cards don't mention Christmas on the front.

So, that's it. Fewer cards, but more charity fundraising cards - aren't our friends lovely - with a mix of themes. A third have a religious theme and a third mention 'Christmas' on the front, with some overlap, but still the religious elements of the midwinter holiday haven't quite faded away.