2016 Holiday Greetings

There’s something wonderful about this time of year, a time when magic is in the air.

Family, friends, parties, champagne, cocktails, big meals, cookies and cake, lights, music, singing and dancing.

And one of the things I really look forward to is getting cards in the mail from friends and family.

A card from my longtime friend Julie and her husband is usually the first to appear in the mailbox just after Thanksgiving, always with a fun and creative theme and photo journey through the year. My Uncle Kim and I have started exchanging doodles in our cards, which is truly special for me since he always made me laugh with his fun doodles when I was growing up and continues to be one of the funnest and funniest people I’ve ever known.

My brother-in-law Mark provides his unvarnished take on the past year in an annual letter. My Aunt Carol has the most beautiful cards and the most precise handwriting I’ve ever seen. My friend Tara has pictures of her kids skiing and winning dressage competitions, and similarly a variety of cards from friends and family feature the younger ones with another year under the belt.

It’s a bit like a time machine to see them age from one year to the next.

For my part, while I don’t have children, I do have art. So over the past few years I’ve been trying to keep it fun by creating “art cards”, using one of my porcelain pieces as the feature image for the card each year.

2016 Holiday Card

This year we’ve adapted one of my favorite images that I’ve used for various pieces in different configurations, usually some form of needing “auto-correct for my mouth.”

This particular version had no text on it, so I digitally added the holiday specific text “Baby it’s cold outside” based on the song of the same name written by Frank Loesser way back in 1944 (thank you Wikipedia).

Seventy-two years later it’s still a popular song and still has fans and critics debating whether the line “Say, what’s in this drink?” is simply a fun piece of old time dating flirtation (i.e. “oh my goodness is there alcohol in this drink?” wink wink) or something darker in which the woman’s drink has been drugged.

I placed the words in a general text box rather than a speech bubble attributable to the man or woman to help provide a bit of uncertainty about which person is saying the line. While the “wolf” role in the song is typically sung by a man, some of my favorite versions have had the woman singing that role.

And, for an added twist this year, I made the card round and added a ribbon so it can be used as a tree ornament or other holiday decoration and potentially become a keepsake for those who might be as sentimental as I tend to be.