Competition | 20 December 2008

In Competition No. 2575 you were invited to submit a carol entitled ‘The Last Noel’.
Noel for me generally goes like this: I make a brief, half-hearted stand against the evils of what now passes for Christmas and then succumb, with abandon, to avarice, gluttony and sloth. By the time I’d finished reading the entry, which ranged from the grim to the apocalyptic, any feelings of bah, humbuggery that I may have been nursing had been swept aside and I found myself overwhelmed by appreciation for Christmases past.

Commendations to Alan Millard, Mae Scanlan, Alanna Blake and John Samson. The winners, printed below, get £25 each and the bonus fiver belongs to Shirley Curran. Thank you all for your entries over the year, which are a pleasure and a privilege to judge. There are almost always more than six worthy of winning and never enough room to commend all those who deserve it.