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Arlington, Va.
16 Dec 1950.

Dear Ma:

We have just finished having a bowl of fish chowder for our lunch, Sid and I. Doris is sleeping off a nosey head cold that she has picked up somewhere. We have been busy all the forenoon making Xmas cards. Those I bought came to an end, so I cut out a bit of a design from linoleum. I enclose a sample sheet (not a good one) of it. And Sid helped me print them. They are decidedly home made, but will piece out our list. Sid has written nearly all his cards, a job that he hates above all else, and about all the Christmas he takes any active part in. He has long given up trying to get presents for anyone, but hands over a bill, & says, "Get what you want with it." It is almost the same with Doris who never gets around to doing anything about Christmas She hasn't sent a card or attempted to buy one. Such a family! If I didn't get to going on it, no one here would observe it at all. Our neighbors are stringing up colored electric lights over their little evergreen trees & shrubbery by their door. Bobbie Williams & his mother and Bobbie's 2 little sisters are all reaching up & hammering away to put lights around their door.

Yesterday afternoon we drove over to Helen's Geoff was lying on the couch with a hot pad on his stomach and said his insides were feeling better. Helen had 2 wreaths at the window and a long sheaf of Xmas cards they had received hitched together with scotch tape & hung side of the big door between the living & dining rooms. They gave Sid his Xmas present, a French beret. He had mourned so over the one he brought home & lost that Helen had bought him one at "Woodies" (it deals in imported ones). When we left we took them with in our car & dropped Geoff a couple of blocks away to have