CHRISTMAS CARDS

Richard B’stard, an English investor in the mid 1800’s, invented the first Christmas card. B’stard had invested heavily in the new British postal service and was eager to sell stamps and to encourage people to send letters and packages by mail. He needed to do this to support his ever-growing cocaine habit. B’stard also had a pornography addiction and had depleted the family fortune in ever more exotic quests to discover graphic renditions of copulation, fornication and all things sensual and sexual. He travelled to India, Asia and the Middle East with his old school chum Richard Burton and brought back many volumes, which he painstakingly translated, into English. Honey pots of Heaven, Tantra Shagstra and Find my Yoni  however were never published as before B’stard had finished his translations former chum Burton had released The Perfumed Garden and the Kama Sutra. The two had a falling out and never spoke again.

In a drug-addled moment B’stard had printed a card depicting the ‘virgin’ Mary, her mother and an unknown minor being ravished by an archangel with the title “…pound yon virgin, mother and child”. This understandably caused an uproar and, with questions being raised in the House of Commons, B’stard removed himself to the remote and ramshackle country estate in Norfolk. The cards that he had printed never actually made it on to mantle pieces but mysteriously disappeared. Rumour had it that avid collectors were paying well over the asking price for them and B’stard, it is said, secretly produced many more and became very rich.

The obscene version is on the obverse

Christmas cards came in all sorts of sizes with themes ranging from faeries and gardens to winter wonderlands, reindeers, santas, snow, holly nativity scenes and the plethora of religious clap trap. Eventually the cards became ever more risque, a bit of a throwback to B'stard's original, with anything going (usually santa going in a chimney pot).
After time though, in the early 21st century Christmas card giving tapered off. The custom had been hi-jacked by corporates and commercial operations to the point where most cards coming by post were sent by electricity or telecommunication providors, banks and insurance companies. Who really wants to display these? Most simply get binned.

Modern communication also assisted the demise with e-cards becoming de-rigeur although the business houses soon jumped on that concept and now clutter the e-mail traffic at Christmas.

Christmas cards, notwithstanding B'stard's contribution, became very popular over the next century and a half. People drew up Christmas card lists and carefully checked off who they had sent a card to , who had responded and, if any new sender appeared then they had to be added to the list. It became a kind of quiet challenge to demonstrate who had the most cards on display. Mantle pieces no longer were enough to display the collections - sideboards, top shelves and bookcases were used. In this context the invention of the Venetian blind was a godsend as each window could display as many as 60 cards.

At our house we have steadfastly refused to send out cards for over 20 years. We have still received plenty but I'm happy to say that the flow is down to a trickle. I guess the senders have kept lists to see who responds with a card and we have gradually been taken off the list.Why this post?


Well, Richard of RBB the well known Luddite sent us a card yesterday.

He signed it from himself and Shelley and some (not all) of his weird alter-egos.

He addressed the envelope to 'The Curmudgeon and The Old Girl'. God knows what the postie thought but at least he didn't address it to 'Comeinyourpants'.

We'll have to steadfastly refuse to send a card by return (unless we re-adress the Vodafone one we got) and maybe he'll take us off the list.

Thanks though Richard and Shelley.