SCROOGE ALERT. If you received a Christmas card with this picture on the front, wouldn’t you scratch your head? Me, too, which is what I found myself doing three times this month after receiving holiday cards from good friends with no apparent connection to Christmas, or even winter!

The first one, with two cats peering out a window, sans any Christmas apparel, I chalked up to the weirdness of cat owners; I love you, GF, but your cats are about as interesting to me as baby pictures, which is to say, not at all. The second one showed another friend with her daughter’s wedding party from May; the third, a former co-worker and her husband, she wearing a fancy white summer hat, both standing in front of a chain-link fence.

THIS IS A TREND THAT NEEDS TO DIE NOW. The trend being, apparently, let’s pick a photo at random from our stash (such as my photo above of a vintage Singer sewing machine) and use that for the Christmas card. Please, if you can’t come up with a holiday-appropriate photo, just send store-bought cards, thank you very much.