Feeling my breakfast making its way back up my throat, I dared not open the cards, lest I was confronted with the Helen Steiner-Rice-style purple prose, with the saccharine heaped on with a trowel.
All I bought was one Baby's 1st Christmas - it's OK, an 11-month-old is unlikely to be able to read. Although if I, when a baby, had seen some of the stuff that is in Christmas cards, I would have made the there-and-then decision not to learn to read, so I would never have to endure reading the things that goes inside modern Christmas cards.
Went to another card shop and was confronted with the same. I asked one of the staff whether they sold non-mawkish cards, and had to explain that I am from the pre-Diana era, where you simply send people cards saying "Merry Christmas", without loads of OTT prose, and commented that if you wouldn't say something to someone's face, don't have it in a Christmas card. She didn't understand what I meant. I did eventually find, hidden away, boxes of standard Christmas cards, and bought a couple of these.
Isn't this a danger in the churches, where we allow the real news of Christmas - God sending His Son, Jesus - to be overshadowed by the soppy sentiment? Reducing God's love, which is tough and strong, to a matter of feelings and mawkishness?
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