Happy, Merry, Prosperous, Christmas, Xmas, Holidays and Festive Season's Greetings...

It's that time of the year - the moment when Inboxes get flooded with snowy pictures of churches or cartoon cats with Santa hats. It's Christmas! Or Xmas! Or Holiday Season! Or something to do with a Greeting for the Season! Or Festive... stuff!

Oh dear... here we go again, I always think.

Then comes the difficult bit. What should I do this year? Indulge in a mass email to everyone everywhere, with my own message of peace, love, hope and... the company logo? Or just forget about it? Ignore the whole thing. After all, no one really reads these messages. It's just a quick glance and then into the Trash box. Isn't it?

Far better to ignore it all. Then came the message above from a language school in England (the picture and message) and I got thinking.

No one really knows what to do about these messages of hope anymore. They really don't. In the old days you just roughed off a card of a robin on a log, or the baby Jesus surrounded by sheep, cows and old men with beards and everyone was happy. Nowadays, it's a little more complicated.

The standard Happy Christmas model is fraught with problems. If you have a good think about the 21st century and the cultural, political and religious issues all around us, you pause over the 'Send' button and start having a good think about wishing all and sundry a Happy Christmas.

And then comes the compromise... and we start drifting down horribly bland avenues where that awful Season's Greetings message rears its ugly head. Greetings of the season? What's that all about? You could send that message at any time of the year? It's nothing special. Happy Holidays is even worse. Just wishing someone a nice time with their feet up, watching the telly? Come on. You're having a laugh.

My father's own pet hate was Merry Xmas. If you couldn't be bothered to write the whole word out, then why bother sending the message in the first place?

I received a new one this morning: A Special Festive Thank You for All Your Business This Year. That probably is the worst of the lot. A festive thank you for my business? You're toasting me for sending you a bag of money? That's real Christmas spirit.

But I digress... that message in the photo above. I really love that. It seems to rise above it all. A Christmas message with a mosque in the sunset in the background. How lovely is that? Just perfect. No silly compromises. Just a traditional message, which somehow addresses cultural differences without offending anyone (I hope). It doesn't get much better than that.