Matt Buck's Hack Cartoons

There is a public row about whether Britain is becoming more or less religious because of the 'lack' of suitable imagery on greetings cards.

Telegraph story

The Daily Mail have also been running a campaign for a traditional festive season - sorry, Christmas.

Mail

The original survey of about 5,500 cards sold in well-known High Street stores, including WH Smith, Clinton Cards and Hallmark, found that fewer than 70 – just over 1 per cent - had images linked to the Nativity scene.

The survey also found that while about 2,920 cards had the word 'Christmas' on their cover; the majority did not have a message inside, and simply wished the receiver 'Seasons Greetings'.

Shocking stuff, I'm sure you'll agree, but perhaps not-so-surprising when you consider that the regular worship-attending percentage of the UK's population is regularly cited at around 10% .

This despite the 72 per cent of the population said they were Christian in the latest Census, and more than 77 per cent who claim some form of religious affiliation.

Anyhow, in cartoon-land, it all got me thinking about the traditional exchange of greetings cards, what was old, and what was modern and that took me to a long-standing exchange of views, which happily was also getting lots of coverage in the news.

PM and Chancellor's christmas cards for 2006



(If you see a picture which makes absolutely no sense at all in relation to this post, then you need to download flash player, which you can find here).

Player