The pōhutukawa (metrosideros excelsa) is often known – in Australia at least – as the New Zealand Christmas Tree. I have a pōhutukawa tree on my balcony (a gift from Michael); this is a flower from December 2021.

I can’t remember exactly when it started.

I think it was around 2005 – I was living in New York and I was a frequent visitor to the Museum of Modern Art. Like all such institutions, MoMA has a museum store where they sell a great array of items which reflect the style of the museum. And, browsing in the store one December, I saw the most amazing array of Xmas cards – brightly coloured, some of them with moving parts, and all of them extremely stylish.

I thought this was something I would like to share with my friends – in New York and all over the world – at Christmas time. I bought several boxes of the cards and a tradition was born.

The cards included all sorts of Christmas images – reindeer, skaters (a very Northern Hemisphere reference) among others.

Sometimes the cards included semi-religious messages, but for the most part the text was generally neutral. (Americans often avoid the use of the word Christmas for fear of offending non-Christians. I have no such reservations – see my rant “The Real Meaning of Christmas”.)

Then, in 2008 I returned to Sydney. For a while I wondered how I was going to keep up the tradition, but then I heard about the Museum Store – a local outpost of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art which also stocked items from MoMA. Sure enough, they had the MoMA cards, and so my tradition was saved – for another 12 years.

Then COVID hit. In the great lockdown of 2020, the Met/MoMA Museum Store closed down (as did my favourite Thai takeaway lunch place, but that’s another story). I had enough cards left over from previous years to scrape together one year's supply, but that was it. The cards pictured above are the leftovers of the leftovers, but there aren’t nearly enough for my entire list of recipients.

I thought about looking for alternative cards, but my heart wasn’t in it. This was never just about Xmas cards – I particularly liked sharing these beautiful miniature works of art with my friends, and nothing less than the MoMA cards would do. So with great sadness, I’m calling an end to a 15-year tradition. 2020 was the last.

To everyone who looked forward to my cards – I’m sorry. And to all those who sent cards in return – thank you, and I won’t be offended if you also decide that the tradition must come to an end some day.

My friends Selwyn and Tina have for many years sent out a Christmas newsletter to their friends. This seems like a great idea, and given my IT skill set, I plan to do an online version of the same thing.

If all goes well, that will be my new tradition – an end-of-year online summary of the 12 months just gone. And if I’m lucky, I might have done something worth writing about in 2022 – 2021 can be summed up in just a few words: Didn't go anywhere, didn't do very much of anything (but at least I’m in a job I like and I can work from home, so that’s something!).

I rather underestimated the task of dusting off my website and putting all this together, so it’s now a few days after Christmas as I write this. But nevertheless, I wish all of you a Happy Christmas (belatedly), and a Very Happy New Year for 2022.