I almost never send Christmas cards. I think some people think I should design my own and send them out each year, me being an artist and all. But the sad truth is that I just never get around to it. I’ve thought about it, but by the time it comes to mind it is usually about 20 December. I really like it when other artists do it; I have one or two sent by Glen Baxter that I treasure. I think the reason I don’t send cards at all is that I’m afraid of missing someone out. If you don’t send any then you can’t miss anyone out can you? And then if you send one to someone and they don’t send one back you get annoyed and cross them off your list for next year. I’m surprised people actually still send me any. I obviously don’t deserve to get them. Photograph: David Shrigley
The premise of my design stems from two adverts I had pinned to my noticeboard recently. One of the ads was for a popular homeware store, presenting a depressing array of chromed, flocked and ceramic-dipped retro tat, draped in a union flag paperchain and baubles. The other was for a new car, shown hurtling down a war-torn Middle-Eastern street dodging Day-Glo paint bombs. Both ads seemed to be trying to do the same thing: distracting from otherwise dodgy pasts by masking shape and substance with a bit of surface zing. To make my card, I took a photograph of my own, fusty versions of the blinged-up objects in the homeware ad. The photograph was then subjected to professional computer-generated paint-splatting by designer Russell Etheridge of MPC, to emulate the car ad. Photograph: Matthew Darbyshire
I like the idea of Xmas being literally engulfed in a cornucopia of material abundance. Although “Xmas” is simply an abbreviation for Christmas, there’s something very attractive about the anonymity of that “X” – it seems to invite the possibility of celebrating anything one chooses. Photograph: Michael Craig-Martin
This is an image I took midway through making a work in 2006. The robin and the New Testament were placed temporarily on a plinth while I cleaned the glass dome they were going to sit beneath. I liked the blocks of black and white that the wall and plinth provided above and below. They could be good and evil, night and day or life and death. I think I’m better at making than sending Christmas cards. I want everyone to have a happy Christmas, I just never get around to telling them so. This robin looks a little how I feel around this time of year: spent. Photograph: Polly Morgan
I just want to offer a “no pressure” kind of Christmas greeting. Christmas isn’t the greatest time of the year for absolutely everyone (my mum died on Christmas Day when I was 19) – so just give them a break, for little baby Jesus’s sake.
Photograph: Rob Ryan
What are my thoughts about Christmas cards? Maybe it’s nice to receive a few from certain people, and send a few so they know you haven’t forgotten them. That’s about it. I don’t send many. I usually make my own. William Blake said that Christ is the Imagination. Not that He exists only in the imagination, but that He literally is the Imagination. So that’s a good argument for making your own. At least it’s outside of the racket. As for this one? Well, it’s for the turkeys, really! Photograph: Copyright Sarah Lucas / Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London./Copyright Sarah Lucas / Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London.
