Christmas bell

SIR – Christmas is indeed a time for cheer, but cards are not the answer (Letters, November 25).

I find that a telephone call is a far more personal way to keep in touch.

It also means saving money on stamps and cards, benefiting the environment and, yes, feeling good for quietly sending a donation to charity. Frances Henton

Salisbury, Wiltshire

SIR – Two years ago I wrote these verses in reply to the first message of the year from someone saying that they would not be sending Christmas cards but instead donating to charity:

We’re sending Christmas cards this

year,

The reasons I’ll make clear.

For as I choose and write each card Come thoughts of those so dear. The friends we’ve made throughout

the years

In places far and near,

They’ll know we haven’t popped our

clogs,

We’ve made another year.

Jill Pearce

Weymouth, Dorset

SIR – Pamela Wheeler (Letters, November 24) reports a Christmas pudding still edible after three years.

In 1976, while working on the geological mapping of South Georgia, my assistant and I stayed in the old whaling station at Leith harbour.

The station had been abandoned in 1965, but the tinned food store still resisted the elements. We found some tins of Christmas pudding – each two and a half pounds – plus a great stack of sweetened condensed milk, all at least 12 years old.

This was too much temptation for two men who had lived on porridge and dried mince for the past two months. Supper that night was a tinned pudding each, with an endless supply of condensed milk.

We are both still alive.

David Macdonald

Emeritus Professor, University of Aberdeen