Well, not necessarily. It could be “Merry Christmas from the Wilson’s [house]”, in which case the apostrophe is appropriate and correct. 
Actually, "Merry Christmas from the Wilsons’ " would be correct in that case. Your way would have them saying “Merry Christmas from the house belonging to the Wilson.”
We just finished our last family Christmas event. I love that we have two loving families that want to spend time with us at Christmas, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still annoy me. Today, we showed up for dinner at my husband’s sister’s house for their family Christmas dinner - to a movie being played. We all sat and watched the movie for the first three hours we were there. As you can imagine, it severely limited our socializing, which is kind of the whole point of family dinners. Then they also invited another couple and their three kids - we were under the impression that this was our family Christmas thing - other people not unwelcome, but it was sort of a, “Huh? What gives?” Then their three young boys played with the host family’s two young boys - loudly, six feet away from where we were all trying to socialize now that the movie was finally turned off. It’s no one’s fault that the dinner was being held in a tiny apartment, but it still ended up in total cacophony. Sigh. Done for another year.
My boyfriend got my son a Nerf dart gun for Christmas. My son is 4 so I gave him the lecture about only shooting it at things, not people or the dogs. Of course my boyfriend has to try it out. So what is the first thing he shoots at? Me. And it hits me in the eye. Of course my son thinks this is hilarious. Thanks for demonstrating the correct behavior.
Is your boyfriend a bit of a tool?
The only possible resolution to this problem is to force-feed your wife pie until the PJs fit.
Not really. King Solomon was all, “Let me bluff about killing this baby so as to determine its rightful parent.” This urge was more, “Let me destroy this thing so that if I can’t have it, you can’t have it, either.” The former is clever; the latter is merely spiteful.
WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE IT’S NOT FUCKING ROCKET SURGERY
I’m going to start doing holiday cards every year now just so I can sign them in this fashion.
Signs point to “yes.”
Haha…He has his moments.
Not really. It’s both a common usage and easily understandable, thus is perfectly OK grammar, even if the precriptivists don’t like it. Languages change, they evolve.
Unlike France we have no National Board of Grammar to make rulings on this. As long as the usage is moderately common, and it is no bar to communication, it’s fine.
[QUOTE=Cat Whisperer]
Is your boyfriend a bit of a tool?
[/QUOTE]
I think it’s a guy thing. My kids also received Nerf dart guns (from my aunt and uncle, who are now in the bad books). We’ve spent the last three days ducking bullets and telling them to quit hitting people. As my husband is lecturing them, he picked the thing up and shot me in the butt. Both of our boys were rolling on the floor laughing. I paid him back with a snowball.
All around my work, people are shooting those things all over the place. Hell, even the director is in on the act with the chain gun version.
My thinking is that I just have to buy one of the guns, but never drop a dime on the ammo. I’ll just start collecting it from the floor at work.
1.) Just because languages evolve doesn’t mean that everything is “right.” It is possible for native speakers of a language to make speech errors. One of the important distinctions between errors and grammatical variations in dialect is that the latter are consistent and rule-governed.
2.) Spoken language and written language are two different things. The latter is artificial and can therefore be argued more convincingly to be subject to more universal standards and conventions. (Cf. walking versus driving: Nobody would think to create a speed limit for pedestrians on a sidewalk, but that’s not a valid argument against speed limits for cars.)
When people write something like “the Wilson’s,” they’re not doing it in a consistent or rule-governed manner, where they’re simply operating under a different set of rules from the mainstream. They’re *attempting *to operate under the mainstream’s rules but fucking it up.
Exactly - just like everything is “myself” these days, when “I” or “me” would be perfectly fine (in fact, more correct).
Uuuuuuuuuugh, fucking hypercorrection. Don’t even get me started.
Yes really. I’m not a strict prescriptivist, but this is not something that has evolved just yet. If you say “The Wilson’s house burned down” then you are implying that there is some person or entity known as “The Wilson.” This is standard and common English usage. If you want to refer to the entire family of Wilsons, you put the apostrophe after all of them, so as to include all of them in a warm and festive fashion, much like the fire that burned down their house.
Also, this is really not a grammatical issue as you imply. It’s a punctuation issue. Punctuation doesn’t “evolve” nearly as frequently or commonly as grammar does.
I also have an actual rant for this thread and not just punctuational nitpickery. My mom has a boyfriend and they’re getting fairly serious. That’s not the rant. The boyfriend is super-mega-ultra Catholic, just like my mom is. That’s not the rant either. I am actually happy for her that she has found a like-minded romantic partner for once. Yay for her. My rant is that she needs to knock off the bullshit with giving me and my kids “Catholic Bible Stories” pamphlets and literature for Christmas, starting yesterday. I’m not Catholic anymore, I’m never going to be Catholic again, and I’m definitely not raising my kids to be Catholic. This is non-debatable and she knows all of this. This is the second year in a row that the first present my kids have opened from her on Christmas has been some shitty little badly-written proselytizing screed about how you are not a good Catholic if you do not go to Mass on all the saints’ Feast Days or whatever. This shit goes directly into the recycling bin. My kids don’t even know what Mass is, except that it is constant regardless of gravitational pull, and I intend to keep things that way.
You know, I don’t think I’d mind so much if she went the C.S. Lewis route or something. The Chronicles of Narnia is a thinly-veiled Christian allegory, but it’s a timeless thinly-veiled Christian allegory. My mom, on the other hand, is apparently buying her religious books from Bob’s Discount House o’ Brainwashing or something. It is the cheapest, most awful crap you can imagine. You know how you can get those el cheapo generic “princess coloring books” in which the princesses sort of look like official Disney princesses but not enough to bring heat from Disney’s copyright lawyers? These Bible Stories books are like that, except with Jesus and Mary instead of Cinderella and Snow White. Jesus looks like he was drawn by a 10-year-old and colored in by the people who did the animation cels on the first season of “The Simpsons.” If you are going to try to brainwash my children into your religion can you at least do it with decent literature? It’s not like there’s none out there!
My brother-in-law (whose kids also received El Cheapo Generico bible stories for Christmas) wants to get my mom a subscription to Skeptical Inquirer and maybe a couple of Richard Dawkins books for Christmas next year. I told him that that would be the passive-aggressive, marginally dysfunctional way to handle the situation, so obviously I’m totally in.
Hey! This is a place to piss and moan. If you want to debate, take it outside.
Sez who?
Clearly “the Wilson” referred to is the “Wilson household”.
Or, “The old Wilson place burned down.”
“Yeah, that place always gave me the creeps.”
I believe that should be “Yeah, that place alway’s gave me the creep’s.”
Ha.
Ha.
No, it’s clearly a mispunctuation of “the Wilsons’ [house burned down],” just as “Happy Holidays from the Wilson’s” is clearly a mispunctuation of “Happy Holidays from the Wilsons.” It only occurs when you’re discussing a family, never when it’s a single person of that surname. If the home of unmarried, childless Bob Wilson burned down, the headline wouldn’t be “the Wilson’s house burned down”; if the same Bob Wilson sent out holiday cards, they wouldn’t have greetings from “the Wilson’s.” I mean, what next, are you going to argue that it’s also okay to write “Happy Holiday’s”? Fuck, let’s ju’st put an apo’strophe in front of every 'single fucking 's.
I’m about as de’scriptivist a’s they come, but let’s not get retarded.