’Tis the season to be jolly! Christmas is a time of joy and laughter, a time of brightly packaged, tinsel covered presents, a time to get together and remind ourselves why we don’t get together during the rest of the year.

’Tis also the season for the ubiquitous mass greetings, most often spamming one’s email inbox, but at times also filling the physical mailbox with needlessly and disgustingly sacrificed trees.

And so it is that I learn that, apparently, I am Ryanair’s Christmas No. 1. I take great pride in this accolade received through one of their many e-mails, this one thanking me for flying with them (funny how I never felt the gratitude during the actual flying) whilst wishing me a merry Christmas.

I hate those indifferent, impersonal, absolutely inauthentic greetings sent de rigeur at this time of year. I truly and thoroughly despise them: they mean absolutely nothing to me for I know they were sent with no meaning attached. It is a robotic, senseless action typical of our times: fake eyelashes, fake muscles, fake breasts and fake wishes.

In fact, it is actually insulting to receive such greetings: lumping me with about 300 other people in a mailing list, sometimes without even knowing me personally, at times without even knowing me at all, kills the magic that is usually ascribed to these annual expressions of goodwill. It takes away a bit of that magic, by replacing it with this need to act as appropriate, or, far worse, to capitalise on the occasion and advertise one’s wares.

This latter case is indeed the most common, for the biggest culprits of this heinous practice are the corporations and companies, who couldn’t care less about you but insist on calling you by name and address you with affectionate salutations.

It is a robotic, senseless action typical of our times: fake eyelashes, fake muscles, fake breasts and fake wishes.

Even worse, however, are the e-greetings I receive from individuals. These ecards symbolise the lazy attitude that currently permeates today’s lifestyle, the world of instant results with minimal effort (and, as with other things instant, like instant coffee, the results are appallingly bad) – people just want to pick something ready-made and simply click it through to everybody so that they appear to have thought about them without actually giving the act any thought.

Every ecard I receive in this fashion does not succeed in auguring me happy festivities but rather tells me that I am not important enough for this person to actually sit down and write a few words personally directed at me.

Thing is, had I not received anything I would not feel this bad, so this is clearly an instance of better to receive nothing than something so pathetically contrived. The worst offender in this case, in fact, is the mass birthday cards received from people who do not even know you exist.

This practice also perpetuates this laziness and hinders our creativity: it ensures people remain unable to express their own feelings on paper, and I do know of some who send these instant greetings to close friends and relatives.

Instead of opting for the easy way out, take a second to sit down and contemplate what makes these people special, then write it down. Even if you write a childish letter, it will still be far more appreciated than a generic e-card which, ironically, they may have already received from someone else. If, on the other hand, you cannot come up with anything, then perhaps you’ll finally realize that your intended recipients are not special enough to you.

Now there are times when sending greetings en masse makes sense, mind you. A newspaper wishing its readers a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year is exempt from the criticism made above, for it can only wish them such greetings in this manner.

The key words in the greeting is “readers” – the newspaper is wishing its readers, people who have gained information, perhaps the most wonderful gift of all, and who in turn have supported the newspaper. It is not sending its wishes to any Tom, Dick, and Harry but to a specific group of people with whom it has built a particular relationship throughout the year.

I said information was a wonderful gift, and it is, but knowledge (and wisdom) is far more wonderful. I purposely referred to information however, for I did not wish to open any Pandora’s box for Christmas. A newspaper which misinforms its readers would certainly not be justified in sending any kind of greeting to any number of its readers, nor would a bad teacher to his students or a lying politician to his followers: indeed I would expect the latter to be furious, for they have not gained any knowledge from the exchange and, one year on, find themselves to be none the wiser. As a matter of fact, the relationship may have affected them badly, and this most likely unbeknownst to them.

Let us not unwrap this any further: suffice it to say that genuine relationships warrant genuine greetings, and the only time this should be done collectively is when there is truly no other way to convey them. Otherwise, if a genuine relationship was absent, sending false greetings only reduces the value of truthful ones.

With that in mind, I hope all my readers had a wonderful Christmas time, and I wish them all a prosperous New Year. Actually, let us reduce the pool to those readers who have read my articles intelligently and have taken away some useful insight.

There, that should make my greetings a little more genuine.