After my mother died, we went through her cartons of pictures and tossed out a) pictures in which we couldn’t identify anyone; b) those in which we could identify someone we didn’t’ care to keep a picture of; c) snapshots of rooms (which we might have kept if they were Martha Stewart-esque House Beautiful rooms; mostly they were pictures of a twin bed with a chenille bedspread and a side table next to it, with maybe a crucifix on the wall over it) that family members sent from Chicago when they got a new place; and d) Christmas photo cards.
We got hundreds of Christmas cards each year, but back in the day not all that many people sent photo cards.
I don’t know if they were more expensive, or whether it seemed too personal and pushy, or whether, since everyone had a passel of kids there was not much desire to look at a picture of someone else’s passel of kids. Especially if they were a passel of kids you saw everyday. (For some reason – possibly because one of their girls was named Maureen – I remember that one year we got a photo card from the Dailey family.)
My mother hung on to these Christmas photo cards long after she had recycled the non-photo cards. (My mother was the original recycler. Who needed to spend 59 cents on an assortment of gift tags when you could use the front of last year’s Christmas cards? And, of course, you could hardly use a photo card as a gift tag.)
Actually, I can understand why my mother was reluctant to give those photo cards the toss: it almost seems like a statement that the card sender is expendable, doesn’t it? And, so, I find myself hanging on to the Christmas card photos that I get each year, even if they’re not among the ones that make it onto the fridge. (Aside to RK: your kids are on the fridge.)
In any case, I have never seen a Christmas photo card as dramatic, weird, and outright daffy as the one that was hung with care by the Huffington Post chimney last week.
Nothing says Christmas quite like a stuffed leopard murdering a fear-stricken antelope. Err... wait, how did we miss that part of the Bible?…The caption under the astoundingly strange photo is equally
as puzzling:
“That you may illuminate your dream this Christmas,” it reads in Spanish.
Well, Feliz Navidad to you and yours, too, Mayor Santini.
Is this some kind of a play on the lion shall lie down with the lamb?
I know it’s not supposed to be reindeer. No sleigh, no Rudolph the Red Nose.
I suppose the one they used was better than the out-takes:
Although the one with the penguins is a tad more topical, what with the snow and the cold and the North Pole – South Pole, what’s the big diff?
Anyway, hizzoner was promoting the San Juan Wildlife Museum, and he’s out there on a talk show defending his decision to celebrate the season in what some might consider a rather silly fashion. In fact, he claims it’s becoming something of a meme. (Yay, Internet!)
"Some might think the card is absurd but others -- thousands of people -- have sent us superimposed images of themselves and their family on the card. Kids, adults, elders -- everybody! Boricua [Puerto Rican] folklore is unlimited, just like people's imagination."
I don’t know if I’ll ever get to Puerto Rico, but I doubt the Wildlife Museum would be on my list of must-sees. Who wants to go someplace else to look at stuffed animals that aren’t native to that someplace else? Not me.
But, hey, I give Mayor Santini props for trying to promo the local cultural institutions. And I’ve got to say that there are a lot more people who’ve heard of the Museo De Vida Silvestre than there were a month or so ago. Not to mention that there are a lot more people who’ve heard of The Great (Mayor) Santini.
Feliz Navidad to that.
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