By Martha Peebles
Creating a humorous Christmas card each year is one of the things I enjoy the most about the holiday. With the advent of electronic greetings, Facebook, emails and texting it seems Christmas cards via U.S. Postal Service are somewhat outdated. Albeit that I’m stuck in the 1980’s and no matter how high postal rates soar, I’m not giving in. There’s something special about holding a card or photo in your hands that someone has taken the time to mail. Possibly it’s the aura of the personal touch, the handwritten personal greeting or perhaps a comforting scent.
The Peebles family Christmas card this year probably doesn’t hold any special aromas but none the less, it was created with love. Talk about a group project! Each year at Thanksgiving we try to get our kids and grandkids all together for a photo shoot. We are not a large family but still, it is no easy task.
This year, as you know, our family was in Florida, vacationing at The Villages, a retirement community near Orlando. On Thanksgiving morning I announced that we were going to take the photo and gave everyone time to get ready.
When our crew showed up outside we decided to cram six adults and two toddlers into a golf cart, thinking this would be a cute shot. Actually, it wasn’t cute, it was crowded, too shadowy and the kids ended up falling out. A nice passer-by with a little dog, seeing our mayhem, offered to take our picture so we would not have to use the stressful, “Get in your own picture in 10 seconds” feature.
Giving up on the golf cart, we decided to make it easy and stand in front of the house. After several attempts, Maizie losing a shoe and Kate swallowing a rock, the mission was finally accomplished. The photo turned out quit well despite all the confusion. My only regret was that I thought of the caption too late. We really needed to be wearing hats!
Who can forget the late 70’s band “The Village People” who made the song “YMCA” popular? When I distressed about the hat idea, I called my son, Arlin saying:
“Can you give us hats?” Arlin, in my book, is a creative genius when it comes to Photoshop and graphic design. He also has an eye for the artistic and a great sense of humor.
In a matter of hours, he sent me the finished product. It was great! Each one of us had just the perfect hat that matched our head as well as our personality. My favorite was Kate’s Indian head dress. I liked my “biker” hat too. Bill made a good cowboy and likewise, Joe, a construction worker. Nancy looked great in the Army and Maizie a cute little cop. The only hat that I didn’t recognize was Arlin’s. He explained that it was what the techno-rock band “Devo” wore back in the 1980’s. The picture turned out much more colorful than if we had been wearing real headgear.
With a name like Peebles, it’s easy to make a play on words, thus this greeting to all my readers coming through the press, “Merry Christmas 2013, The Village Peebles.”
Martha Peebles lives in Illinois and her father Bob Baker lives in the Village of Hemingway.
