Read the text and make up 5 special questions. All about Christmas cards. Christmas cards are a big tradition in the English-speaking world. In 2017, people in Britain sent and received about 900 million cards. That's an average of about twelve cards for every person, from tiny babies to the oldest grandparents. The number of cards that are sent around Britain causes an annual headache for the postal service. Each year, the postal service has to take on seasonal staff to help with the extra mail, and postal sorting offices are stretched to their maximum capacity and sometimes beyond it. In 1994, before the age of email and social media, the service handled about 1.6 billion cards! In spite of advertisements telling people to "Post Early for Christmas", few people get round to sending off their cards before December 10th; and from that point on, the postal service slows down. Until the age of faxes, emails and social media, the pre-Christmas period often caused a lot of problems for firms and industry, as "urgent" letters and documents took several days to reach their destination by post, slowed down by the mass of Christmas mail! The tradition of Christmas cards began in Britain in 1843, just after the introduction of the first national postal service, the "penny post", which started in 1840. Today, almost 200 years later, Christmas cards– sometimes known as New Year cards – are a tradition all over the world, and not only in Christian countries. And while more and more people send e-cards and Christmas selfies to their friends and family... and even to all their "friends" on Facebook, virtual cards are not the same as old-fashioned traditional Christmas cards. You can't hang an e-card on the wall, and you can't decorate a room with rows of e-cards. Thanks to phones and tablets, we can do lots of things better than we could do them before. But sending and receiving Christmas cards is still best done by "snail mail", using a real card and a real envelope. It's much more fun. Please Help me ​

1. How many Christmas cards were sent and received in Britain in 2017?

2. What was the total number of Christmas cards handled by the postal service in 1994?

3. When was the tradition of Christmas cards first introduced in Britain?

4. Are Christmas cards popular in non-Christian countries?

5. Why is it more fun to send and receive traditional, physical Christmas cards rather than electronic ones?