[Illustration: Tossing up for Turkey at Christmas Time.]
Dear Mr. Punch,--I venture to address you on a subject that I feel
sure will enlist your kind attention and sympathy. How am I to get
through Yule Tide? Ought I to give up the dispatch of "cards," or
ought I to send them to all my relatives, friends, and acquaintances?
If I drop the custom, people who like me will think I am outting them,
and persons with whom I am less popular will imagine that economy,
not to say meanness, is the cause of my ceasing to trouble the Post
Office. Suppose that I "hang the expense," and _do_ send the cards.
Well, I am in this position; it is a matter of the greatest difficulty
to get a suitable greeting to all those who receive my annual
benediction. If I have "Wishing you and yours every happiness," with
my appended name and address lithographed, the greeting seems cold,
and even inappropriate, if addressed to, say, a favourite Maiden Aunt;
and unduly familiar if forwarded to the acquaintance I saw for the
first time in my life the day before yesterday. Then if I trust to the
ordinary Christmas Cards of commerce, I am often at a loss to select
an appropriate recipient for a nestful of owls, or the picture of
a Clown touching up an elderly gentleman of highly respectable
appearance with a red-hot poker! If I get a representation of
flowers, the chances are ten to one that the accompanying lines are
of a compromising character. It is obviously cruel to send to a
recently-widowed Uncle some verses about "_Darby and Joan_," and my
Mother-in-law is not likely to feel complimented if I forward to her a
poetically expressed suggestion that there is no pleasanter place than
her own home--away, of course, from her Son-in-law! And yet these
are the problems that meet the would-be Yule Tide card distributer at
every turn! I remain, my dear _Mr. Punch_, yours sincerely,