Christmas Card Gallery

Our Annual Christmas Card Tradition

The MVA Scientific Consultants’ Christmas card has been a holiday tradition since the company’s inception in 1990.

Each year MVA employees are invited to submit their own designs for the card, and then we hold a vote to determine the winning card.

The only requirement for submission is that the image must be a micrograph of some sort. Over the years the winning image has been taken using a variety of instruments, including a polarized light microscope (PLM), a scanning electron microscope (SEM), a transmission electron microscope (TEM), a scanning white light interference microscope (SWLIM), and a differential interference contrast microscope (DIC). Sometimes the submitter chooses to modify the image with color or graphics. Sometimes the winning image is in its “raw” form. We welcome all submissions, and it’s often a close race.

The very first card was printed as a photograph. The employee names were then typed on a piece of paper; the paper was cut to size and glued onto the photograph. We then stuffed each envelope, licked the seal, affixed a stamp, and hand-wrote the address!

Fun Facts:

• We always list every employee at the time of card production; this includes high school and college interns.
• Winning cards have been submitted by scientists and non-scientists, executive staff and interns, and everyone in between.
• A framed copy of every winning image and the accompanying card is displayed along a hallway in our office.

Our Christmas Card Gallery

Below are all of our Christmas Card winning designs presented chronologically from the first to the most current.

Click an image to enlarge and view caption. We hope our images bring you joy.