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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459939" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A C*******s - well, OK, seasonal - plea..</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459939" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Art brings a smile and a message. <br>Thus the art of ‘Christmas’ cards…<br>(and I use the word loosely, <br>as its public use is now disapproved…) </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459939" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A folded card: that’s four smallish sides to fill.<br>An appropriate seasonal smile on Page One; <br>Page Two requires nothing, <br>blank but room for something else to say<br>in lieu of that family catch-up print-out page<br>your children will have helped with; or maybe not..</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459939" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Page Three offers a seasonal message – but<br>watch out these days – ‘you can’t use<br>THAT for THEM…’ oh of course, they’re, <br>what exactly? Crypto-Buddhists? <br>Lapsed Amish? Richard Dawkins and<br>his, er, dour or smiling family ? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459939" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Page Four – the great let-out<br>for the card’s – and implicitly your –<br>abysmal grey vapidity…<br>it’s a charity card! <br>No money for the Hallmark millionaires! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459939" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So spare a thought this season, for<br>those who have to choose those<br>cards for charities…</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459939" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">non-denominational, non-racist, <br>politically correct but only in<br>a negative sense – no dolphins<br>or humpback whales with an<br>ambivalent Monna Lisa smile: <br>your Japanese friends might sense a slight…</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459939" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For suspected closet Christians<br>where the charity’s along those lines, <br>it’s back to symbol and the catacombs<br>and secret worshippers – perhaps<br>a burning nightlight, hinting <br>faith, in outer, inner, darkness? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459939" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">or if that’s risky, then the January snowdrop, <br>suggesting hope, continuance..<br>for children’s charities, you can risk<br>a teddy bear – so far, no pulpit East or West<br>has denounced him as a capitalist, or as<br>American as Roosevelt…or an<br>endangered species thus dismissed…</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459939" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">but keep the smiling children off the card..<br>their faces might betray leanings<br>towards skin-colour preference, <br>adoption difficulties…</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459939" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The 25 charities who have grouped together<br>as the '1959 Group’ have risked this year<br>a Santa, face hidden but for pinkish nose…<br>cavorting on the ice, accompanied<br>by an antlered orchestra; <br>I guess the charities for multiple schlerosis, <br>epilepsy, autism, lifeboats, have agreed…<br>the rink-edge board behind him coyly<br>says ‘Merr….stmas’…hmmm, close thing…</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459939" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The glorious sunlit barn-end in the snow<br>of a Massachusetts farm, ‘printed in USA, <br>finished in Canada’…uh? … tells us that<br>the year moves round; nature, seasons, farm work<br>always with us; as it was in Bethlehem; <br>how sweet the fresh, clean manger smells! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=459939" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">we turn as always, to Page Three; <br>where heart warms heart with written words; <br>taste, politics, social obligation, <br>have no place here; it’s simply, love.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Michael+Shepherd">Michael Shepherd</a></strong></div>