'Tis the Season and I've once again been pondering the Christmas Letter, the typical typewritten one pager, copied and sent out with or without a card to friends and family in December. I have an ambivalent, or better said complicated relationship with the entire idea of a Christmas Letter. In my time, I've read many and they vary greatly in style and content.Some letters offer a recitation of month by month activities and a heartfelt wish for a great New Year. The tone is upbeat and even the not-so-good stuff that has happened is wrapped up with an overall positive spin and a hope for better times to come. Many focus on the younger generations of the family describing all the accomplishments of the offspring in the past year. Others wax philosophic, focusing on the spirit of the season and how nice it would be if humankind could extend the blessings of the season by permanently levering the joy to bring about a better world for all. What I've never received is one that just laid it all out there, the unedited truth of the writer, warts and all. Maybe I'd call this a "I had a pretty
I'm tempted at least once in my life to write a down and dirty letter like this during the holiday season. I'm not sure anyone would want to read it but it might be a useful writing exercise; something to get it all out there and then drop in the fire pit to watch the tendrils of smoke carry off all the evil humors into the atmosphere. By now, I'm sure I must seem depraved, disrespectful of the season, and wallowing in the morose. Maybe I am. Of course I'm proud of my children, happy to be alive, looking forward to enjoying a flaming Christmas pudding on December 25th and optimistic (I think) about 2009. But, I just might pen my own rendering of what January - December 2008 was like for me as a counterweight to the traditional letter, if for no other reason than to satisfy my insatiable desire to try.
Cheers one and all!
Go for it! I'm right there with you Kate - it would be refreshing to read reality instead of packaged PR.
ReplyDeleteOne year I wrote a short poem, a line or two about what each one of us had done during the year. There was only so much I could say, and it had to rhyme.
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