I wanted to send some sort of 'holiday greeting' to all of my family, all of my friends, my colleagues, those people that I have yet to meet and those people that I shall never meet BUT it is so difficult, in today's world, to know exactly what to say without offending someone.

After some deep thought, I hope that you will appreciate my 'greeting' to you all.

Please accept with no obligation on your part, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally-conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practised with the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice and with respect for the religious or secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or indeed, their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted Gregorian calendar year 2007 (not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great) and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms: this greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal; it is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting; it implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others; it is void where prohibited by law; it is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.

You do, however, have 14 days from the date of your receipt of this greeting in order to consider whether to accept the wish. The wish can be returned within that time-frame with no obligation or liability on your part, thus, rendering you free from any effects (harmless or harmful) of said wish.

This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first. Furthermore, the warranty is limited to the replacement of this wish or the issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

No trees were harmed in the sending of this email greeting but it may contain nuts.

Nigel

Copyright (c) 2006 Nigel Osgood