Analysis of Someone Else's Christmas Cards

This should be year 9 of my Analysis of the Christmas Cards series where I think of as many different ways as I can to categorise the cards we receive then choose and photograph my favourite ones before chucking them all away and saying goodbye to Christmas before it rolls round again. But the number of cards we get is on the decline, and either I’m getting bored of them or the cards themselves are becoming more boring - less homemade, disfigured by ugly written slogans (for example season’s greetings) with even a couple of duplicates or repeats from previous years. I’d already decided I wasn’t going to bother with the analysis when I visited my Aunt Gillian’s house and saw a christmas card display that was better than any I’d seen for ages and therefore worth counting up then quickly sorting into some basic categories.

Around the sitting room, birds on the mantlepiece.

The cards, already sorted into loose categories, stand on every surface in the sitting room. There are so many, about 100, that they spill out into other rooms. I missed a whole group on the windowsill (the curtains were drawn) that excitingly included a triangular card, there is also an octagonal one in the religious corner (shown below left). These have been included in the final shape statistics which are as follows and roughly as usual: 55% square, 22% portrait, 22% landscape, 2% other.

The religious corner, small ones on the bookshelf.

Two more chests in the sitting room.

Into the hall and the kitchen where we find some of Gillian’s favourites (I think her number one is the hare staring at the moon).

I had to choose a favourite quickly, and went for the Selwyn Image mistletoe, oak and robin design displayed on the mantlepiece and shown below. Gillian said she liked all the bird cards, which make up 25% of the whole collection, with other favourites on the card display bar in the kitchen. These include two wonderful buildings shown below and the ever popular mysterious Christmas hare.

My favourites: two buildings and two robins by Selwyn Image and Gertrude Hermes (the last two are Ashmolean Museum cards).

Christmas Cards - Year 7

For seven years running, when I take down my christmas cards in early January, I have counted and sorted them into different categories. We get 50 to 70 cards, with not much change over these years, and the statistics are not very different this year from the last one ( you can see the analysis of 2020 cards here ).

I sort them into shape - square cards continue their rise and now account for more than 50%, homemade - a steady 34%, charity cards - 32%, and various subject categories including the ever popular trees, birds and animals in snow scenes. Some of the images are very similar to each other and some cards are ones I have been sent in previous years (I’ve no idea if from the same people). This christmas card analysis habit has made me look at them differently, when I open the envelope I am hoping for either a high quality, well designed example of the classic snow scene/nativity or for some originality.

This (above) is what I mean by classic, it is big (200mm across), bright and shiny and has an inner page glued in with the writing on it.

And these (below) are what I mean by original, they are all christmassy and also a surprise - the strong colours look good when on display.

There was an unwelcome trend that I noticed this year, writing on the front of cards - 30% of them. As you can see from a selection of these below, some of the writing is on the best homemade card variety, while some just disfigures pretty standard or really badly designed cards. I continue to be amazed at how awful and drab so many of the commercial card designs are, something I’ve never dared mention before as I still love and hope to continue receiving them.