Thanks for all the pics, articles and clips. - And also our daily dosis of Daily Mail
I believe it's the first time we see Mary and Count Ingolf on the job together.
The visit by Mary is no doubt deeply appreciated by the children. Practically all of them have been or at least felt being left out and as such most have a pretty low self-esteem.
Directed mostly at obese children, they here learn to build up their self-esteem again as well as loosing weight.
There is a good reason why these homes have been around for a hundred years and why they are still sought after.
However, they may have to change their names though. The Christmas Seal Homes is no longer a precise name because a good deal of their funding (and before Mary their PR as well) came from the sale of Christmas Seals, which were placed on Christmas cards next to the regular stamp.
But nowadays people don't send Christmas cards anymore. Or to more correctly, they do - online.
No one is sending personal letters either, any since most official letters as well as letters from your employer, insurance, school, pension, municipality, taxes, doctor and so on and so on are digital, there can easily be weeks between a regular letter in our mail-box here outside the Muhler home.
Result: The number of letters and as such Christmas cards as well has plummeted straight down here in DK over the past 10 years. - Only surpassed by the drops Vil E Coyote regularly go through...
It doesn't help that the postal service in their infinite wisdom has concluded: People and businesses as well as the authorities don't send letters anymore, as in don't send letters at all. What to do? - Got it! Let's triple the postage, cut down on days letters and parcels are brought out, cut down on the number of letterboxes and close almost every single post office
then people surely will start sending letters... ?
I'm serious! That's exactly what they have done - despite that successive governments have done everything to make people go digital.
Now people
have gone digital and the postal service is standing there - what happened??
So, the Christmas Seal homes don't get much income from the sale of Christmas Seals (which you BTW can buy online and put on your digital post card). Fortunately the homes have such a good reputation, and get a good PR not least because of Mary, that they can survive on donations - but the sale of Christmas Seals used to be a very good secondary income.