The Christmas story for the digital age

Letter boxes have still overflowed this year notwithstanding text and email's dominance of our normal communications flow. There's something satisfying about sending and receiving a card, however little may be written on it, and despite - perhaps because of - the expense and labour-intensiveness. I never cease to wonder at the variety of representations of the Christmas message that the postman brings: duplicates occur, but they are rare. My father used to hang cards up on sticky tape, and we played a game trying to spot which card image contained a certain unique feature.

This year, we have had a smattering of e-cards as in recent years past; but so far the best e-message has been forwarded by Thomas from Lisbon: as one might expect from him, both up-to-date and tongue-in-cheek.