Gilbert Mayor Steve Berman

Christmas Cards

When I was growing up (still a work in progress) Christmas time was the happiest time of the year. I wanted to give all of the employee's, commission and board members of Gilbert, some kind of gift for Christmas. Which begs the question "what do you get for 900 to 1,000 people, most of whom you really don't know?" Regular Christmas card certainly show "the thought is there", but how much fun is it to get a plain old "Holiday" card. That is when I got the idea to have a "Christmas Card" custom made so that it might have a little more sentimental value than a card that any one can just buy.

My friend, Tres Service, and I created the first two cards and we are working on the third. We were both astounded at the response the cards have generated. Some members of Gilberts Human Relations Commission were horrified, most of the reaction was very positive. The real surprise was the news media's response.

I am including some of the newspaper article's written about the card. Additonally we had five television stories about the card, numerous radio talk show's discussing the card, and this year KTAR actually posted the card on their web site.

This was the first year of the in-famous Christmas cards from the Mayor.