For as long as people have been sending out Christmas cards, people have been messing up the plural and possessive forms of their own last names. And until those cards are fully replaced by holiday holograms or some other technological wonder, I'll feel obliged every year around this time to help people navigate the potentially humiliating waters of those few words scribbled on greeting cards.
Here's what I'm talking about: Merry Christmas from the Wilson's! Happy holidays from the Gomez'! We're looking forward to spending time at the Jone's house. We're having the Morris's over this year.
Assuming that "Jone's" was a reference to people named Jones, every one of those greetings contains an error — a seriously humiliating error. And though the mistakes are different, they're all rooted in some surprisingly common confusion about plurals and plural possessives.