Terence Blacker: Merry Christmas - we've crossed you off our list

The truth hits like a snowball in the face. The cards you sent year after year were received with a groan

If they had any sense, the various claimants to the crown of Miss Manners 2005 who have cluttered the bookshops with guides to modern etiquette would set up a hotline for seasonal advice. The social minefield is at its most perilous at this time of the year.

What to say if one's new love puts up a Christmas tree with coloured lights? Is it bad form to ping a few bulbs of the neighbours' garden Santa display with an airgun? That business on the photocopier after the office party: was it sexual harassment or a Christmas bonus?

And now, in the polite guerrilla war that is the sending and receiving of Christmas cards, a new conundrum has emerged: how to respond to being formally culled by way of a festive Dear John note that is a bewildering combination of the civilised and polite with the downright insulting.

I was culled yesterday. For years - too many years, I now realise with embarrassment - I had sent cards to someone with whom I had once written a book, and his wife. It had been fun working together, all that time ago, the book had been quite successful and keeping in touch once a year had been like a casual, affectionate nod to a period in our pasts. Because my co-writer is an entertainer who appears regularly on TV, our relationship, I now see, was essentially lop-sided. I could keep in touch him as he grew older through his public persona - receding hairline, gentler material and so on - but he never saw me.

This year's card from him and his wife contained an A5 note, printed in appropriately blood-red lettering. Over the years, their Christmas card list had expanded, they told me and presumably a few others. The whole business was getting out of hand and so they had decided that it was time to reduce it. For this reason, the enclosed card would be the last I would receive from them. They would, instead, be making a contribution to charity. They were sure that I would understand the need for this measure.

Let us not be over-sensitive here. A Christmas card does not denote a relationship. To stamp one's foot and say, "And there I was thinking they actually liked me all these years!" would obviously be childish. In fact, this last-ever card from my former friends has been useful. Like a clever postmodern novel or play, it has subverted the form, forcing me to think again about the whole business of cards.

There is a casual, arrogant assumption that receiving a card at this time of the year gives pleasure. The recipient opens the envelope, reads and thinks of the sender, miles away, years away, but still, at this magical moment, in touch in a meaningful way. Together, a row of cards on the mantelpiece provides a wall of reassurance against a chilly world outside.

Now the truth makes contact, like a snowball in the face. The cards which have been sent out year after year were received at my ex-friends' house with a groan. They represented not the cheery "Hi there!" from an old pal which I had intended but, at best, a grisly excess of politeness, at worse a sort of stalking by greetings card. Theirs to me were probably dispatched with all the warmth and goodwill of someone sending off a cheque to pay a parking fine.

It was the smug reference to charity in the note that annoyed me most. Charity has become the great off-the-peg excuse of the moment, whether it is offered as the reason for celebrities appearing in the latest asinine reality show or for people eager to avoid time-consuming social duties. The implication in the red-letter note was that, simply by not receiving future cards, I would be unwittingly doing something rather wonderful for starving children in Africa. On balance, I think I would prefer to make the gesture myself.

Perhaps the Christmas Dear John will become fashionable. Domestic boastfulness of one kind or another is at its worst at this time of the year. Sending out a message to those on the outer fringes of your acquaintance that you now have so many friends that a cutback has been necessary is as egocentric as the smuggest family newsletter.

Some will say that my former friends were right. They have been honest, blowing apart the humbug of card-sending, pointing up that it is an annual ritual propelled as much by ego, insecurity or marketing as by genuine affection. There might even be a case for the introduction of some kind of colour-coding for cards to differentiate between the genuine and the dutiful without it having to be spelt out. Until then, it is sensible and polite to give people formal notice of dismissal from the card list.

But there remains the problem of etiquette. How does one politely respond to a cull? With an understanding note, thanking the senders for their openness and congratulating them on their generosity to charity? More aggressively, with some form of retaliatory note, culling them back? With a reminder of good times spent together and a heartfelt request that they reconsider their decision?

My inclination is to keep sending out those cards, always making sure to include some cheery message - "Hope to see more of you in the coming year!" "You were great on Children in Need!" With a bit of luck, they will year after year be opened with a sharp twinge of irritation and guilt. That may seem unfeasibly generous but, what the hell, it's Christmas.

terblacker@aol.com