I was reading through a magazine and I noticed a writing competition that was being organised. The competition was centred around Christmas, it was to produce good Christmas messages for the inside of Christmas cards (Weihnachtskarten) and the prize for the winner was to be a car, a holiday and Christmas day for the winner and 20 of their friends to be spent in London in the Ritz hotel.

The initial stage of the competition was to send a Christmas poem to the address provided, if the poem was short listed then the entrant concerned would be contacted and asked to join a panel of judges in Milan, all expenses would be paid. All of the good poems and Christmas card messages would be published in Christmas cards all over the United Kingdom that Christmas. It was mainly going to be for Charity cards, so we were given particular words that needed to be mentioned within the text. The competition also asked that a one line Christmas Greeting (Weihnachtsgrüsse) also be sent to the panel of judges.

The competition winners would be mentioned on the company’s website, plus the name of the winner would be printed on the back of the published cards.

I enjoyed writing poems so decided to have a go at writing some poems and messages based around Christmas. I produced three which were good, and showed them to my family and friends so they could decide which one would be good to enter in the competition. I sent the selected poem off to the address in the magazine.

Two weeks later I received a call to say that my poem had made the short listings. I was flown out to Milan the very next week. There I was met by 10 other people who had been short listed. We were informed that the competition had been organised to enable the Christmas card industry to gain new and fresh ideas. They felt that most of the messages in Christmas cards were mundane and boring, and felt that inviting people to compete against each other may produce good poems and messages for the cards.

After being wined and dined for two days, the judges made there decision. I was runner up, which meant I won £1000 and a meal in the Ritz for 2. Although I hadn’t won my poems were still to be published inside Christmas cards, and my name mentioned on the website.