Aren't Christmas cards an odd thing? If it weren't for the fact that they are clearly sold overseas as well, I could easily view them as a typically illogically polite British sort of thing. As I type this, I'm writing the last of my cards, for the folks at work-- well, technically speaking I'm not, I'm writing this instead. What I should be doing as I type this, is the last of my cards, for the folks at work - my putting it off, by the way, is no slur on the lovely and aforementioned folks, but simply another sign of how much of an uphill, uninspiring struggle this Christmas seems to have been.

But back to writing the cards, or at least to writing about them. How absurd is it to write out cards for people that I see every day, when I could just as easily say "Have a Happy Christmas" to them instead? And in fact I will of course do that anyway, when we go our separate ways tomorrow, which makes it even more absurd to be giving out cards.

There is perhaps a bit more sense in sending cards, when it's to people who live further afield, but even then it sometimes seems to defy all reason. I have a second cousin-- well, I probably have quite a few, and to be quite honest I've just spent ten minutes umming and aahing over an online genealogy chart to work out whether she is a second cousin, rather than a second cousin once removed, or a first cousin twice removed, or indeed somebody's Auntie Mabel. Anyway, there is one particular relative (who, the dodgily named but actually quite helpful www.cousincouples.com would indicate is a 'second cousin', us sharing common great-grandparents) who religiously (in every sense of the word) sends us a Christmas card, and a very newsy letter, every year. I did think she'd missed this year, but lo and behold it came through the letterbox on Tuesday.

To my certain knowledge (well, pretty certain anyway) I haven't met this particular second cousin for nearly fifteen years, not since before I left home, and my main memory is of her being very tall and wearing a very smart, deep blue coat. So although I know, via several years of newsletters, the name of her husband (can you have a second cousin in-law?) and her daughter (who would be my... erm...) I have to admit, somewhat shamefacedly, that it would be quite possible for me to pass her in the street without realising. I don't mean this to be rude, by the way, and rather strangely (perhaps) I do enjoy reading her letters - from memory, I think they began not long before, or not long after, the second cousin once removed (ie, her daughter) was born, so whether the huge change that having children can bring on has made her more interested in fairly-distant (both genealogically and geographically) relatives, I'm not sure.

I, of course, always send them a card as well, thus perpetuating the cycle of absurdity, although I didn't this year feel inspired enough to write a letter to go with it - or maybe I just couldn't find enough news. My Mum always used to say, of various other relatives (although not, let me clarify, my second cousin, which is of course my Mum's... hold on, I'm just checking... my Mum's first cousin once removed) that their Christmas letters always seemed so full of things they'd done during the past twelve months that it made our lives seem rather dull by comparison. I think I know now what she means (although it's possible that my life may just be, in fact, terribly dull).

I'm going off at a huge tangent here, but I have just been browsing (always dangerous) around the www.cousincouples.com site. It actually is about... well, about what you think it's about (it does exactly what it says on the URL) and in fact the relatives chart I was looking at is only a minor part of the site. Did you know (do you care?) that "Most people can marry their cousins in the US". Hmm, that might explain a lot, and even though you may think that this is rather rich coming from a man who lives out in the hicks-- sorry, out in the sticks in rural Devon, let me continue down this dubious road. You may, or may not, be alarmed to learn that "No European country prohibits marriage between first cousins" so if you're still on the shelf, wanting to settle down, but haven't found the right person yet... well, never mind flicking through the Classified Ads, just go through your Christmas card list instead.

Ah yes, with that smooth link we're back to the subject of Christmas cards, although I can't bring myself to return to it without just one final revelation (or indeed, Revelation) from the website of the moment, which tells us that "Leviticus 18 lists all forbidden sexual relationships." Apparently, which is the website's point, "Cousin relationships are not included". I haven't yet worked up the nerve to check what the forbidden ones are, or indeed how many there are, and although I would never discourage anyone from reading their Bible (particularly not at this time of year) you might get a misleading sense of what it's all about if you start with Leviticus 18.

So, Christmas cards (he typed for the umpteenth time, and hoping that in light of the above his Mum isn't reading this week's column), yes. We seem to have gone through an awful lot of them this year, mainly due to Miss Curnow, who seemed to confuse our request for her to list the friends she wanted to give cards to, with us asking her to list every child on the register. Admittedly it's a fairly small school, but when Little Miss expects to send a card to every one of the forty odd pupils, not to mention the seven or so staff, you do get through a lot of cards very quickly.

I recently heard of one couple who give each other the same card every year. Occasionally Mrs C treats herself to a leg wax at the local salon, as only this can remove the hairs that normal shaving cannot reach (is it just me, or did that sentence sound eerily like a Heineken tagline?). Actually, she often gets her eyebrows waxed at the same time. This latter, incidentally, has the effect of making the (remaining) eyebrows very shiny and the surrounding skin rather pink, and overall it gives her the look of someone who is perpetually startled for the next day or so. Sorry, I'm digressing, but then thinking about my wife's legs often has that effect...

Anyway, when last she went I very bravely sat in reception while she paid good money to let some woman cover her legs in hot wax and then wrench tiny hairs out of her legs by the roots. The lady running the salon (not, on this occasion, the one wielding the wax) raised the subject of Christmas and in particular she mentioned she and her other half re-use the same two cards every year. Having bought rather expensive, and rather large, cards several years before, they had concluded that it would be a waste and a shame to throw them away, so they save them, adding a new message each year. I have to conclude that it was her idea, since it was presented in a romantic light - if it had been a man's suggestion I suspect it would have been labelled 'mean' rather than 'romantic'.

But as we dragged the Christmas decorations down from the top of the wardrobe this year, and found a load of Christmas cards from last year packed away with them, I did begin to wish that we all did that. Yes, the cards can be recycled, and in fact I have this year started channelling the spirit of Valerie Singleton and used some of last year's to make gift tags for presents; but to be honest, the current ones are at least as much of a problem. Maybe it's just in our family, but it seems to me that one of the perennial Christmas problems, along with the ever-popular "How do I stop the tree from shredding?", "How many weeks do the sprouts need?" and "Which b****y bulb has blown?", is "Where do we put the cards?"

Amidst rose-coloured childhood images of getting a Palitoy Cardboard Death Star (ah, what a sign of the times - once upon a time that used to make me misty-eyed, now I find myself still musing over my wife's legs, some three paragraphs after the fact) and watching "The Wizard of Oz", I do have vague recollections that suggest putting up the cards was a dilemma for Mum and Dad every year. We had a plastic tree shape, into which you would slot them - but it wouldn't hold many, and you had to take them out again to see who they were from. We had cardboard wall-hangers, into which they slotted - but they needed to be put up with drawing-pins, leaving irksome holes behind in the New Year. This year Mum announced (rather proudly I think) as far back as November that she had some new stuff, which in essence sounded a bit like double-sided sticky-tape. Last weekend however, I learnt that it had failed the test, in that when you take the tape off the wall, it in turn takes the emulsion off.

We ourselves have a sort of Santa's sleigh affair, which is a cardboard sledge 'pulled' by cardboard reindeer, with the gap between the two filled by 'real' reins (or at least some red string) so that you have a clothes-line to hang cards on. But as well as, of course, failing on the drawing-pin test, the slightest breeze through the house sends the cards aflapping & aflying. This year we have some of the cards up on the shelves, a few half wedged between video cassettes, in an attempt to anchor them, and some atop the TV, but all in all it's not an ideal arrangement, and a strong gust of wind, or an excitable cat, and they'll soon be down.

But, before you tire of my poo-pooing, and my bah-humbuggery, I have to say that for all the problems inherent in displaying them, and the occasionally wearing effort of writing them, I do enjoy getting Christmas cards, and not just from second cousins. Yes, it is an absurd tradition, and yes, there are some truly awful cards out there, but we encounter so many people who come and go through our lives and (to quote Frasier Crane from the final episode of "Cheers" - well, it makes a nice change from "The Simpsons" doesn't it) we must never miss the chance to tell these people how much they mean to us. Even if some of the cards we send, and get, may be born of habit, it's nice to remind others that we love them, and are thinking of them (even if only, truly, as we write the card) - and it's sometimes a much-needed boost to be reminded of that ourselves.

So, to anybody that knows me, whether I've already sent you a card or not (and if I haven't by now, I'm not going to!) have a Merry Christmas!!