I’ve noticed that Christmas cards (nice ones) are much harder to find here than back in the UK. It could be that our town is not well-provided with the right kind of stores, I guess, but I’ve had to resort to buying cards on-line the past two years.
Coloured envelopes are a menace. I think the UK post office folks banned red ones at one time, as being hard on the posties’ eyes. Quite right too!. Bah humbug!!!

Jo – I did consider sticky labels, but that would have meant another trip to the shops. Besides, they weren’t even a nice, bright, Christmassy, green – almost black. Anyone receiving one would have assumed it a funeral invitation rather than a harbinger of good cheer.

I’ve often thought it must be very confusing to celebrate Christmas in the Antipodes, especially to those of us acclimated to the northern hemisphere. I’m not sure I could adjust.

Mind, when one’s about to venture forth, as I am, into a temperature of -9C, with an additional ten degrees of windchill, it has its appeal.

I’m still trying to (and to all accounts from other ex-pats will be trying for the next x years) get used to the “traditional” Christmas (snow, robins, pictures of Santa on his sleigh etc) in a summer-Christmas culture – it is incredibly wrong to be walking around in shorts and a t-shirt in 20+ C heat and then go into the mall to see Santa in his red, fur lined, hooded coat and long white beard, in a grotto covered in “snow” (fiber-glass and glitter…)

and the rest is just gimmick to make you spend…. spend… spend…