Either we still run wild, or else the reaction has
set in and we avoid the Christmas card shop altogether. We convey our
printed wishes for a happy Christmas to everybody or to nobody. This
is a mistake. In our middle-age we should discriminate.
The child does not need to discriminate. It has two shillings in the
hand and about twenty-four relations. Even in my time two shillings
did not go far among twenty-four people. But though presents were out
of the question, one could get twenty-four really beautiful Christmas
cards for the money, and if some of them were ha'penny ones, then one
could afford real snow on a threepenny one for the most important
uncle, meaning by "most important," perhaps (but I have forgotten
now), the one most likely to be generous in return. Of the fun of
choosing those twenty-four cards I need not now speak, nor of the best
method of seeing to it that somebody else paid for the necessary
twenty-four stamps. But certainly one took more trouble in suiting the
tastes of those who were to receive the cards than the richest and
most leisured grown-up would take in selecting a diamond necklace for
his wife's stocking or motor-cars for his sons-in-law.
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