Christmas Carols
Christmas Carols playing cards illustrated by Stuart Dilks
Originally published in 1997 by the Heritage Playing Card Company, Ilkeston, Derbyshire, and re-issued in 2018, this pack presents the illustrations of the artist Stuart Dilks. Each card in the Heart suit portrays a verse of the Twelve Days of Christmas, while the opening lines of some of the best known and loved Christmas carols are portrayed on the remaining three suits: Silent night, Little donkey, The holy and the ivy, Ding dong merrily on high, Once in royal David’s city, O come all ye faithful, Away in a manger, God rest you merry gentlemen, and many others. There are two jokers, one of which depicts the Star of Bethlehem • See the box
Above: Christmas Carols playing cards illustrated by Stuart Dilks, published by the Heritage Playing Card Company, 1997 & 2018.
By Peter Burnett
Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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