I love getting Christmas Cards in the mail. The most welcome ones are the photo Holiday cards I receive from family and friends. My cousin lives near the beach and each year she searches for a holiday card that shows a beach scene. Most years she has no luck finding one. The traditional cards with their snowy winter scenes, while memorable, just don’t capture her idea of beautiful holiday scenery.

Once she got into digital photography, she was able to take incredible pictures of her beloved beach year round. Being a creative individual, one day she brought along a Santa hat, a red and green striped beach towel, and some candy canes. She staged a holiday scene with the hat on the back corner of her beach chair and the towel draped over the arm and onto the sand with a few candy canes placed on it.

Last week she sent me a preview of this year’s Christmas card. Her entirely unique photo Christmas card for 2008 shows the back of Santa’s beach chair sitting in the shade of a palm tree, looking out across the sunlit sand to the turquoise ocean where he seems to have gone for a swim. How delightful…and how “her.”

So, while I’m freezing this December putting up my outdoor Christmas lights, I’ll have a clear picture of how my cousin is toughing it out on a balmy beach. She always did make me smile.