COVER N.191 - UK

Postmark: 01.12.2022 (?)

Posted on the 1st December; Received on the 21st December 2022
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There was a time when the days before Christmas would see an influx of letters with Season's Greetings cards arriving in letter boxes. We, at home, would display them somewhere next to a Christmas decoration.

Christmas cards were also a relevant source of income for some well deserving entities, like UNICEF, who would sell thousands of cards to companies (ans also to individuals) therefore generating some revenue that could later be used for truly important actions like vaccination or food distribution in geographies that sadly would and still do depend on external help for a vast majority of the population.

Not anymore. Season's greetings, like any other type of messaging are nowadays almost entirely channelled through email and so the pleasure of receiving a nice card from a friend is almost gone, replaced with the immateriality of an image on a computer screen.

Not so with my friend Fraser, who year after year keeps designing and sending his amazingly witty Season postcards, like the one he again sent me last year ( strange thing to write.. last year was only a couple of days ago....)

So, Thanks a lot, old pal, I really liked your beautiful card, which I cannot go by without posting  here:

If receiving a Christmas card is something that is rated as a  "Critically endangered" species, receiving a card with a Christmas stamp as postage is even harder to come by, I think.  So I was quite happy to see that my letter from Fraser had been posted with one of the six self-adhesive stamp set issued on 03NOV2022, dedicated to the theme, with illustrations by Katie Ponder.

Of note is the fact that the (hard to read) mechanical postmark urges users to "Use your old barcoded stamps by 31 January 2023 or swap them for the new barcoded ones", that is to say "The Queen is dead, Long live the King", I guess....