Was there ever a Christmas tradition so universally despised as turning on the lights in mid-November? Well yes, actually, there was. Do you remember the round robin – the self-consciously casual family newsletter to be sent indiscriminately to cousins, ex-colleagues and strangers met on holiday?
Those double-sided sheets of A4 first fluttered out of Christmas cards some time in the mid-1980s, around the point that the home computer began conquering the world. Boasting, once costly and laborious, could