Year-In-Review-Christmas Letters

karen2karen ♦ March 27, 2014 ♦ Leave a comment

Year-in-Review Christmas Letters
The Christmas season is upon us… carols are on the radio…holiday lights are strung…the hunt for perfect gifts has begun…addressing the multitude of cards to be sent has started…
And what about the “year-in-review” letter instead of a simple Christmas card? Isn’t this getting a little out of hand? I mean really…Your husband won the Nobel Peace Prize; your son just received a full academic scholarship to Oxford; your daughter has just made the Olympic gymnastics team AND you all spent most of the summer helping displaced Haitians??? Really…Really? Hasn’t this attempt to catch each other up on the year’s news become a total bragfest?
Is this the latest “keep up with the Joneses” and are we compelled to compete? Or should we go another way? What if we add a dose of reality to these letters? For example, what if the letter said… “daughter Amy is given to wild mood swings lately. We expect/hope she will get her period any day now…Son Bill was cut from wrestling team and is having friend trouble at the lunch table…Too much to do and husband has a wicked cold and is being really whiny about it (or is that me?) Anyhow…Happy Holidays from our house to yours!” Just a thought! Bet you wouldn’t feel as bad about your own woes if you read this one.
And shouldn’t there be a rule about the length of such epistles? They should absolutely NOT be more than one page. Further, you should NOT adjust the font and point size so that you can cram more into that one page! Leave something OUT! Think about how many of these darn things everyone has to read at this, the busiest, most exhausting time of the year! No one will be the loser if you forget to mention Susie’s preschool pageant. Can we all just agree to keep it short and sweet?
And further, don’t you feel just a little excited/relieved when you open a card that does NOT include the letter? It’s actually refreshing. You find yourself thinking – I really like those Johnsons. Maybe I will have to give them a call in the New Year and find out how things are going with them because I don’t already know. There was NO letter. And now I find myself wanting to know. Maybe this is a good thing….Maybe everyone would start getting in touch with each other simply because of the brief greeting of the traditional Christmas card itself! Or maybe not.