Here's the image we came up with for our Christmas -- no, not "Holiday" -- cards. It's a closely cropped shot of Tiny at the kitchen window with one of last year's Christmas (that word again!) cards on the sill to the left. She was staring at a glass bauble from our street-treasures collection on the counter off camera. Last year's Christmas card featured a salt ship at Eastern Salt across the street framed by our light-bedecked fence. The year before, we launched our blog with the politically prescient -- see John Gibson's The War on Christmas -- "The tidings that dare not speak their name" featuring a portrait of our Home Sweet Home in Chelsea-by-the-Sea transformed by the magic of Christmas lights along the fencetops, in the windows and on the tree.
While George W. was wowing the troops and leaving the nattering nabobs of negativity in the dust this morning with a rousing why-we-fight speech whose bottom line was "Americans want two things in Iraq. They wanna see our troops win, and they wanna see them come home," we were keeping the homefires burning, going through hundreds of digital images of the last year to find the perfect one to express our seasonal -- CHRISTMAS! -- greetings to family and friends. We've got a keeper.
This Photoshop-enhanced image on the back of the Christmas card is the artist's attempt to express Tiny's thought process as she goes for the jugular of the glass bauble.
Now into production.
Update for InstaPundit visitors: Production details here. Our weapon of choice: The Pentax Optio 450.
Just so the liberal donkeys will read even if they can't understand, Anyone who wants proof can be nothing but an agnostic. Belief in atheism is just as much a matter of faith as belief in G-D. No proof exist in either belief. Six thousand years of recorded history indicate that the accumulated hopes and experiences of mankind are best expressed by the Judo- Christian philosophy. Hail Christmas!
Posted by: goomp | November 30, 2005 at 06:07 PM
Just curious... what's wrong with wishing a Happy Hanukkah too?
Posted by: Patti | November 30, 2005 at 06:09 PM
Happy everything.
Posted by: Sissy Willis | November 30, 2005 at 06:32 PM
You have a gifted eye for the perfect picture Sissy... it's beautiful.
Posted by: Teresa | November 30, 2005 at 10:40 PM
Thanks for sharing! I've been doing Photoshopped Christmas cards for a few years now, they're always a hit. Here are mine on Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/barelyfitz/sets/50883/
Posted by: Patrick Fitzgerald | December 14, 2005 at 10:47 AM
The approach I take to holiday greetings is, if I know my audience, I wish the appropriate thing - Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, Good Yule (I have one set of these), I know no Kwanzaa-celebrators but if I came across someone wearing a Kwanzaa sweatshirt or something I'd go with Happy Kwanzaa. If I don't know my audience personally but they're wearing a seasonal or religious indicator like Santa Claus earrings or a Christ-fish pin or something, I go with that indicator. With complete strangers who give no clues, I stick with Have a great holiday, not because I am sensitive about Christmas but because it's polite, IMHO, not to make assumptions about people.
Beautiful Christmas card... Ours this year are a multi-step process involving cutting a half-Christmas-tree silhouette into the cover flap of forest-green card, embossing textural white "snow" randomly, and attaching three little UTEE-"glazed" round Christmas ornaments to three branch tips, each one one of my kids' faces. Whew! Cute but labor-intensive.
Posted by: Jamie | December 14, 2005 at 11:08 AM