About The 2021 Christmas Card

Thank you for scanning the QR Code on the card.

This year’s card design is inspired by the cover art for the country-gospel album “Satan is Real” by the Louvin Brothers. Hopefully you’ve seen this on one of those “20 Funniest Album Covers of All Time” internet list articles, it shows up on a lot of those.

The cover of "Satan is Real" by the Louvin Brothers. The brothers are depicted standing in a fiery rockpile, singing passionately, arms outstretched in front of a crappy cardboard figure of a buck-toothed, pitchfork-holding Satan. The title is pictured in bright yellow, stylized letters.

If you’re interested, select a service below to stream the album:

I’ve thought for years that it would be fun to make a play on this album cover, and since it’s nearly impossible to get everyone together for a traditional photo, it seemed like a great thing to do this year.

I created the photocollage in an app called Pixelmator on my iPad. Working from an image of the original, I first changed the stylized title from yellow to green, then swapped the letters in SATAN around to read SANTA. Then I brought in a couple of free-use images of snowy landscapes to create the background. To replace the crappy cardboard Satan, I used a photo of an injection-molded plastic Santa figurine, a souvenir you can pick up from a coin-operated injection-molding machine at Toledo’s landmark holiday attraction, Children’s Wonderland.

Charlie and I borrowed our clothes directly from the Louvin Brothers; Abbey and Liz’s winter wear comes from an image search for “women’s white suits.”

Maybe you were hoping for one of those traditional Christmas Card letters telling you what we are all up to. I really only set this page up so I could explain the card, but I guess we could do some of that too, since you came all the way here.

Abbey is in her second year teaching mathematics at Ypsilanti Community High School. Her classroom is amazing, and I helped.

Britain was laid off last December and spent the first half of the year funemployed, but joined an up-and-coming telecom firm last summer, is having a great time, and feels weird writing about himself in third person all of a sudden.

The girls are both excelling in school and have exciting activities lined up for the upcoming year, involving lots of chlorine, camp, and cookies. Girl Scout cookies, that is. The sales start in January, find us at a booth in the Ann Arbor area or hit me up for an online order link.

We are all vaccinated.