All our Yuletide cards are on the way to their recipients, as of this morning.

I usually refer to these as “Christmas cards”, but, before there are any accusations of hypocrisy, let me point out that people were celebrating a Winter festival long before anyone had heard of Christianity. The Christians merely hijacked the existing festival because they had nothing similar to offer.

It doesn’t matter to me whether they are called “Christmas cards”, “Saturnalia cards”, “Yuletide cards” or anything else. We send them because it’s a great way of keeping in touch with family and friends whom we otherwise may rarely see.

(Insisting that the name “Christmas” can only be used by Christians seems just as ridiculous as insisting that the name “Wednesday” can only be used by those who worship Woden!)

This year, neither Mary nor I had produced any artwork for a card in time, so Mary found a suitable design by another artist on Zazzle. I must say that I’m impressed with the quality of the Zazzle card, and we will look into using Zazzle ourselves for future print-on-demand projects.

It has also become a tradition with us to create a return address label featuring the Asian (Lunar) New Year animal for the forthcoming year. This year, I produced the artwork above for 2017, which will be the “Year of the Rooster”. Again, there are no superstitious intentions; it’s just a decoration relating to the name and doesn’t imply any beliefs about the year.

I’m aware that the “Year of the Rooster” doesn’t start until January 28th, 2017, but I don’t see that as a problem. Even in Britain, “New Year’s Day” didn’t actually fall on January 1st until it was moved to that date, in 1752.