A dozen Christmas Cards from the ACCA '17

There seems to be some competition among people who send us Christmas cards as to who gets their card featured on the blog. One or two people have asked me about it. So, in the spirit of competition, I've picked 12 out of the 90 we received to showcase in this year's ACCA supplementary post.

First up, as regular ACCA readers will know, I audit the number of religious and secular themed cards that we get. Most of the religious ones this year were a bit dull, but I really liked this one produced by Oxfam. I'm a little concerned about the blonde Aryan baby Jesus, but overall it's a really nice card.

I like robins in real life and as a Christmas card theme. This card also had glitter, which is a card feature I started counting this year for the first time.

It's not quite a robin, but I thought this was a charming Christmas cockatoo, on the card from my Australian cousin, Trefor.

The other birds to feature heavily on Christmas cards are, of course, penguins. We have had a lot of penguin cards over the years and they did well as a theme this year. Cathy really liked the funky penguins on this card, and I have to agree with her.

But how about penguins commandeering a bus to go Christmas shopping? Sounds like an awesome concept, doesn't it? I really liked it.

Several schools produce Christmas cards as a fundraising scheme, featuring artwork from kids. My friend Sarah's daughter drew this tree, which was also the only card to wish us Happy Christmas in Welsh. Christmas trees were one of the most popular themes.

Snowmen are also a well-performing theme, as you would perhaps expect. I liked this card from my sort-of-cousin, Sue, as she keeps chickens and so the card was very apt.

One of the themes that again was sadly lacking was 'dogs in Santa hats'. However, like last year, we had a card with behatted sheep to make up for it. Also featuring a pun!

'Christmas food' is an odd category and I've thought about dropping it. However, last year we had the really great puddings card and this year a cheery, cheeky walnut.

Keeping on the theme of nuts, Cathy gave me a card covered in squirrels and with a pun(!) on it. I love puns.

These days, it's not the festive season without the release of a Star Wars film. I liked this Star Wars theme Christmas jumper mash up card.

But I have saved the best until last. The moment I opened this card, I knew it was going to be my favourite card of the year. Surprisingly, it also got counted in the religious side of the audit. It's one of the very few cards to actually mention Jesus, and it was sent to us by Cathy's cousin Adam and his wife, Bonny. (I'm not sure if naming them is giving credit or blame, to be honest.)

So, here you go... click on it to see it in all it's glory.

The big 2016 Christmas card audit

This has become an annual tradition for me. I'm a couple of weeks later this year as I had a big university project to sort in the first fortnight of January. But that's done, I have my life back and I'm back to counting Christmas cards and looking at trends. For the record, here are the figures for 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2012.

I will post some of my favourite cards later, but for now, this is one of the ones I liked the most!

I haven't gone into as much depth as I did last year on the demographics of who sent what kind of card, or had a look at which Bible verse is considered the "most Christmassy" this year. That sort of thing is probably best done biannually, so keep an eye out in January 2018. Also, this audit has attracted some attention and at least one person deliberately tried to find the most uncategorisable card possible. And failed.

Here's the figures. New or altered categories are asterisked. I've listed categories that didn't feature this year at the end. UPDATED 29 JANUARY (as someone gave us a late card)

Total number of cards: 91 (lowest ever)
Hand-made / home-produced cards: 7 (same as 2014 & 2015)
*Cards with embellishments (bits stuck on): 4
* Unusually shaped cards: 2

Cards sold in aid of charity (or fundraising): 55 (down from 60 in 2015)
Total number of charities represented: 48 (Up from 39 in 2015 and the second highest ever)
Main charity represented: Five charities had 5 cards - Macmillan, Traidcraft / SCIAF / CAFOD / Christian Aid, Sue Ryder
Notable newcomer: Donkey Sanctuary, with pictures of donkeys on the front of course!

Religious themes
Religious-themed cards: 34 (bit of a drop from 2015)
Cards featuring the Nativity: 17
Christmas story 'characters':
Three kings: 5 (not as popular as last year but still much more popular than the shepherds)
The shepherds: 1 (scored 0 in 2015, so this was a big improvement)
The star of Bethlehem: 2
Angels: 1
"Joy to the World": 1
*'Cartoony' religious (various themes): 6

Other themes 
'Peace': 1
Santa: 6 (down from 14 in 2015)
Penguins: 5 (including 3 "couples" cards saying, e.g. 'to both of you' with penguin couples on)
Various cartoon bears: 3 (still well down from the all time high of 12 in 2012)
Deer/reindeer: 4 (increase)
Christmas decorations: 5 (increase)
Christmas trees: 8 (increase)
Christmas food: 1 (decrease) - that's the puddings card, above
Robins: 2 (no change)
*Donkeys: 3
*Sheep: 1
Winter scene/scenery: 8 (increase)
Snowmen: 7 (increase)
*Licensed characters: 3

No real clear favourite themes here, but Christmas trees were surprisingly popular. After the epic collection of Dogs in Santa Hats in 2015 (see pics!), there were none this year.

Messages (front of card only)
Cards that mention 'Christmas' on the front: 29. Only 2 of them were religious themed.
*"Seasons Greetings": 1
*"Winter Wishes": 3
*"Let it Snow": 1
*"Ho Ho Ho": 2
*Mentions "Jesus": 3

Non-scoring themes (from previous audits): 'Political' fund-raising cards; Dogs in Santa Hats; Mistletoe; Owls

Back in January 2015 (when I wrote the 2014 audit results) I said I would start producing graphs and stuff in January 2016, when I had 4 years worth of results. Although I did some demographic data-crunching, I didn't do any graphs. If I have time I will try and get to it in the next couple of weeks.