As ever, the Christmas Grinch has not sent a single card this year. It is not exactly something brand new in my case. I am so hopelessly disorganised and later fearful that I have forgotten someone (I usually have) that some years ago I must have concluded it wasn’t worth the effort. So the year, in common with the previous 25 (at least), I have bought just the one card. I won’t tell you who it’s for but she would probably swing for me if I didn’t bother.
That is not to say that I don’t like Christmas cards. I think it’s nice that people go to the trouble that I don’t to buy them, write them and then send them. For everyone who didn’t get a card from me, which is everyone, please accept seasonal greetings.
In order to nail any suggestion that I am somehow tight, I have decided to do something with the money I would otherwise have spent on cards to make charitable donations. This is not me being anymore compassionate than you but everything to do with me realising that as most people send cards and I don’t, and spend quite a lot of money buying and sending them, it would only be right to spent the same dosh in a different way.
I am going to do this every year from now on. My current partner, always the brains, organiser and conscience of the operation, takes care of the Christmas card situation and I can make simple donations to charity, which she actually did on my behalf yesterday. Well, I was working for the greatest humanitarian charity in the world, the Red Cross.
If you can afford to make a donation to an organisation that refuses to ignore people in crisis, at home or abroad, you won’t believe the difference it will make. £13 million has so far been raised in order to help the crisis in Yemen. That’s the difference.
