Our mantlepiece with the favourite cards on display.
This is the 10th year of my Christmas card statistics where I sort them into categories that have remained pretty consistent over the years. For example more than half of the cards we received were square, just over a third were handmade and the most popular subject matter was a snow scene. A category that caught my eye this year was the white border, common to forty percent of our cards. On the mantelpiece (above) are a selection of the best, on the right is one I particularly enjoyed - a cottage to make up with a paper tree attached, it’s one of three cards in the ‘shaped’ category.
Classic Christmas Tree category.
In terms of subject categories, we had 24% that were mostly tree, examples are shown above including the lovely red square one on the right. Another classic category is the star or candle (10%) , with examples that are mostly homemade, shown below.
Classic Shining Light category.
I’m still surprised by the decline of cards with nativity scenes (down to 8%) or reproductions of well known art works, I would say there were none of those this year. Instead we got rows or groups of animals (below) - jolly robins, spooky horses and hares in wooly jumpers.
Groups of animals - some in wooly jumpers.