Don’t Want a Card? Have a Lump of Coal
by Karen Williams | December 23, 2005
Seminole Chronicle
For years, I sent out photocopied Christmas letters with my Christmas cards. The letters contained the usual updates on each family member plus zany hand-drawn, crayon-colored (I'm low-tech) illustrations.
My elderly mother, now in heaven finding ways to criticize the harp playing of the angels, would point out flaws in my letters.
"Why do you bother to send those out?" she'd ask each year. "No one has time to read them. And I bet they laugh at those silly pictures you draw."
"That's the intention," I'd retort. "The drawings are supposed to be funny - such as the one showing you walloping Santa with your cane when he brought the wrong size of support hose."
I wouldn't give my mom the satisfaction of stopping my letter writing. But now that she's up there, giving St. Peter a tongue-lashing and giving me a breather, I figured I'd ditch the letters this year.
I would simply send out Christmas cards incorporating a cute family photo. Quick and easy.
I dug up three Santa hats, asked my daughter's beau to be the photographer, and invited my feller, Mark, and my daughter to join us for a photo session.
When I handed a Santa hat to Mark, the trouble began.
"I don't wear hats," Mark asserted. "After 20 years in the Army, wearing hats all the time, I no longer wear hats. Ever."
"North Pole, we've got a problem," I murmured to headquarters.
"And besides, these are girl Santa hats," Mark complained, eyeing Emily's and my cute headgear.
After much cajoling, I convinced Mark that his was actually a boy Santa hat, due to being dirty and sweat-stained. And I implied that if he didn't wear it for the photo session, I'd be so heart-broken I'd return all the tools I'd bought him for Christmas.
Mission accomplished.
We headed outside to pose by the pool, the citrus trees, and near some blooming geraniums. (Eat your hearts out, Northerners!)
When the photos were developed, I eagerly pawed through the prints. But alas, something was wrong with each one.
If Emily and I were smiling, Mark looked like the grinch. If Mark and I were smiling, Emily looked more like Satan than Santa. If Mark and Emily were smiling, I managed to look like the ghost of many Christmases past.
I held out hopes for a wacky photo of us by the pool, arms flailing, pretending we were about to fall in backwards. Emily and I looked adequately frightened, but Mark appeared to be happily dancing on Broadway.
Returning to the film development department, I threw the photos on the counter and begged a worker to help me select one.
And that's how we ended up with this year's photo card. The background is a snarl of branches designed to taunt Northerners with our fruit and flowers but looking more like hurricane debris. Mark looks, well, less than amiable under his boy Santa hat. And Emily and I are on either side of Mark in "The Price Is Right" type poses, pointing to him as if he were a prize refrigerator.
"Why did you choose that stupid photo for our Christmas cards?" Emily inquired.
"Never mind," I replied. "But next year, we'll go back to sending out letters."
"Why do you bother with those letters?" she asked. "No one wants to read them."
And that's why Emily is merely getting a lump of coal in her stocking this Christmas. And a Santa hat - the grimy one.
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Copyright 2005, Karen Williams
