Rich and Marissa McIlhenny, of Mt. Airy, had a lovely greeting card made up with their adorable kids, Jesse and Daniel, and their cute bear, whose name is being withheld because he is in the Witness Protection Program. It is a wonderful card except for the fact that it is a Happy Hanukkah card from a family that is not Jewish.

by Rich McIlhenny

(Ed. Note: This story originally appeared in a 2004 edition of the Chestnut Hill Local.)

My wife has this perfect cousin, Angela Rempe Jones, in her hometown of Scranton. She has the looks and figure of a model and she has two perfect little boys and one perfect little daughter. She has a gorgeous house that she got a tremendous deal on. In fact, she gets a tremendous deal on literally everything she buys, and she is very proud to tell you of each bargain. She is happy, bubbly, funny, generous and so sweet that you just have to love her, no matter how imperfect she makes you feel.

We went up for a visit a couple of weeks ago, feeling like the Clampetts as we pulled our seldom-washed, wrapper- and crumb-strewn Subaru Outback into her driveway. Her house appeared to be professionally decorated for Christmas, but of course she had done it all herself. There were lights and bows on every living and non-living thing outside of her house. They were angels and a nativity scene out front, a giant Santa on the side and a two-story high-glowing snowman out in the backyard for the kids to see from their bedroom windows.

I paused and thought of our house back home with a half of a bush lit up out front with a really thick orange extension cord coming out of it that stretches across our walk and over our porch railing to the outlet. It was pathetic and probably a safety hazard.

I come from a long line of inferior holiday decorating. My father would take the tangled lights out of the storage bin and just hang them up in a messy ball. One year the Halloween pumpkin he placed above our door was still around a couple of months later, so he painted “Merry Christmas” on it in black paint.

We entered her spotless home with our wrinkled clothes, stained with baby vomit and spilled yogurt, and we were instantly even more impressed with the bows, garlands and wreaths that filled every room.

We were only there for the night. It was my wife’s class reunion that weekend, and I had to meet clients the next day. Before Marissa went out for the night, Angela showed her the perfect Christmas card that she had made on her computer. She and her father were dressed as Mr. and Mrs. Claus and her mother, children and grandmother were dressed as elves. She had made the costumes herself out of discarded pool table felt, cotton balls and old pajamas. She downloaded the image and printed out 100 copies. It had taken all of two hours and cost her $18.38, not including stamps.

After admiring Angela’s handiwork, my wife said that she was going to make our own Christmas cards this year with our two-year-old Jesse and one-year-old Daniel on them and send them out to everyone as well. “I can’t wait to see them,” Angela said with just a tinge of sarcasm and a hint of a knowing smirk.

Angela Rempe Jones, who is perfect in every way (according to Rich McIlhenny), is seen with her perfect family: Delilah (left), Jake (rear) and Sam, as well as their best friend (also perfect), Brixx, an English Bulldog.

The next morning on the way home, Marissa told me how she is going to prove Angela wrong. She wasn’t upset. Angela was right. My wife, God bless her, thinks about and starts doing a lot of things, but somehow something comes up or goes wrong, and like most of my projects, they usually end up jury-rigged, half-finished and a little late.

That night we dressed the kids up and got out our digital camera and tried to make them laugh, taking dozens of shots until we got the one that was perfect. Marissa bugged me for days to get the picture on a computer disc for her. I put her off for about a week, as I was buried with work, and it was deep in the throes of the fantasy football season, but I finally got it to her.

The author's father with the repurposed, "holiday pumpkin" above the door.

The next day she rushed off with the kids to Target in Plymouth Meeting, which has a photo center for this sort of thing. There is no image to be found on the CD. She comes home upset and confused, but armed with the knowledge that she can just take the memory card from the camera, which the picture machine at Target will then be able to read.

She unloads the kids out of the car and into the house and gets the memory card. She loads them back into their car seats and drives back to Target. Once there, she spends a half-hour cropping and editing the picture until it’s just right, while Jesse is screaming for a Dora the Explorer lunchbox he saw on a shelf they had passed and Daniel was screaming to be nursed. She finishes and hands it over to the lethargic, surly and heavily pierced girl behind the counter, who tells her to come back in 20 minutes.

Marissa decides to kill some time pushing the cart with the boys in it around the aisles, with Jesse screaming that he wants this and he wants that, while Daniel’s frantically trying to lift up her shirt to get to her boobies as she is shoving cheddar goldfish into his mouth.

When she returns, she finds that the picture came out looking like a Renoir painting. If you squint at it from about 10 feet away, you could kind of make out Jesse And Daniel.

With the kids absolutely out of control, she decides to come back another day to redo the thing. Two days later, she trudges back in, well armed with goldfish and cheddar bunnies, ever determined to show that Angela up.

She didn’t crop so much this time, handed it over to Marilyn Manson‘s cousin and after spending another 20 minutes of her life she won’t ever get back, saying to Jesse, “No, you can’t have that. No, I’m sorry… No… No, maybe next time,” while shoving food into Daniel’s mouth. She finally gets the picture back, and it looks much better.

According to McIlhenny, his father "would choose the most unattractive trees he could find," leading to standouts like this one. (Photo courtesy of Rich McIlhenny)

Now, how to dress it up? Being raised Catholic, she was initially drawn to the manger scene with the baby Jesus, but decided to go non-denominational, being the politically correct Mt. Airy woman she has become, and chose “Happy Holidays” as a theme. She left with the boys, relieved that she was finally through with the toughest part of the process.

The next day she rushed back with the boys, who fell asleep in the car on the way. She reached out to me and asked if there was any way I could drive over to watch the boys in the parking lot while she ran in to pick up the cards. I wasn’t too far away, and after I showed up, she walked back into Target and saw sign over the counter that said “SORRY, BUT WE WILL NOT BE MAKING ANY MORE HOLIDAY CARDS.”

Frantic, she asked for her order, and the girl behind the counter said, “You got yours in just in time.”

Relieved, Marissa paid for the order and started walking out to the parking lot as she opened up one of the envelopes. There, next to the beautiful picture of our boys, it said “HAPPY HANUKKAH.” She screamed at the top of her lungs, “I can’t freaking believe it!”

So she sent me back in to take care of the situation, not amused by my suggestion of drawing curly sideburns and yarmulkes on the boys.

After explaining several times to several levels of management that we were NOT Jewish and this was an error, I was able to get us a refund plus I got us keep the cards. Doing them over was not an option. So, when you get yours in the mail, we haven’t converted. We’ve just kind of surrendered. To that perfect girl in Scranton.

Happy Hanukkah, Angela!

Rich McIlhenny is a realtor with ReMax Services and a lifelong resident of Mt Airy. He can be reached at Rmac88@gmail.com