Ok, I’ve never sent one. Honestly I am afraid too. What if writing one is like taking some suburban-forty-something kind of drug. “Once you start you can’t stop”. This year just a letter...next year I print it on cutesy paper and make my own cards...then I will be starting my cards in September, making them with little scraps of old paper, stamping, embossing and signing the dogs names alone with my own.
What if it’s a gateway drug to the deadening middle age angst of Bunko parties, book clubs, and watching 70’s reruns? Pretty soon I’ll find myself skipping band rehearsal to home bake cookies…and start trading in my Kandinskys for Kinkades. ACKKKK.
...ah fear and judgment arise when the mind digresses...
Actually, I’ve always enjoy getting holiday letters. At this point in life, it is hard to keep up with everyone I have known and really do care about. So, the annual update from friends is welcome even from afar. Also, I truly enjoy trying to read between the lines to figure out what has really gone on.
In my “Family Of Origin” Dad writes the Christmas letter. It’s always exciting to get - if only to see what *his* take on the last year has been. Also, he utterly disregards literary convention, which I find thrilling. It's a seasonal clash of poetry and prose on the battlefield of fact. With Dad’s letter there are few lines, it’s brief and in some ways has acted as a behavioral tool - keeping all of us in line. If you don’t do something notable, you don’t get in the letter. You can do something notorious; of course, to get written in, but the net behavioral effect is the same.
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