The last day of Christmas

I started taking down some of my cards (some of them were from last year) but I got down to the essentials sweeping the kitchen floor, tidying away piles of half made New Year cards, and magazines. I've found one way to deal with holiday traditions is to institute your own. 8 years ago just before Christmas I invited friends over to my house for mulled wine, nibbles, provided cards, stamps and pens and asked them to write cards to Amnesty International Prisoners of Conscience. I've done it every year since. I now get people asking when I'm going to have my evening. I decided this year to tweak the tradition and this year held it after the main holiday period. This way things are quieter people are less frazzled and I think I'll do this again next year.

It was lovely to catch up with a bunch of people - I threw out a load of invites, on the one hand I ran out of chairs occasionally during the afternoon and on the other I saw several people who I haven't seen for months.

The Amnesty campaign carries on until the end of the month. So if you have a stash of Christmas cards left over check out the link above. Their campaigning does work. Someone I wrote to last year has been released. I and the other 5000 people who wrote did make a difference.