For many years, so many that I can’t recall the start, I mailed a Christmas Letter along with the Annual Holiday Card offering up well wishes for a happy holiday season. My Christmas Letter was not a one sided bullet pointed recollection of the past year’s events. It was pages of funny topics recounting the year‘s happenings and offering up joyful memories of times spent with family and friends. When recalling these fun times I always made sure to include the names of the folks involved in the happenings.
And so it started. The joke was to see if your name would be added to the letter in a tale well told from the year’s events. I took many a ribbing from my family over the Christmas Letter; in fact, they were often the most critical (I mean that lovingly), correcting a detail of my letter and reminding me that I’d forgotten the cousin or friend who had attended an event here or there. I always remarked that I would make sure to acknowledge them the following year.
One year in particular I mentioned some family members by name and remarked that I’d spent time with my siblings. Well, my siblings wanted to know why they received the “group” shout out in the letter instead of individual recognition. So, perhaps you understand my dilemma. There really was no end to the jokes, to the point that a Christmas gift from my younger sister, Karen, was carefully packaged in the previous year’s shredded letter. Ah, the love of a sibling, I mean Karen.
When I moved to Tampa the letter was a quick means to inform friends of the new address. Even the year I divorced AND remarried was recounted in the letter. I was kind to the ex…I believe 'factory reject' might have been the comment about the demise of our marriage. Just kidding!
When Jim and I married, the letter then encompassed his family and more names were being added and with each new name I had to provide a bit of a bio. The comment would include something like, Fred, Jim’s cousin, or Courtney, Jim’s cousin Fred’s daughter in Virginia. Ah, the list kept growing, as did the pages of the letter. Was there no end? I decided when I moved to Virginia in 2002 to stop writing the letter. After all, I can only take so much crap about a missed name. You forgot a birthday and jeeeeesh. It was just meant to be a fun bit of reading. Well, an hours worth at least and hopefully folks kept green and recycled.
I did write the letter that year. It made sense because it allowed me to provide updated addresses, phone numbers and some fun commentary about the flight to Charlottesville with the cats on board our plane. That was a very memorable trip.In 2003 I had officially retired the letter. I was busy and Jim and I were on the road a lot. I didn't want to be the "we went here, we went there" person. I was going top send cards and wait to see if I received any comments about the missing missive.
And then the happenings of all happenings happened. I ran into an old friend Lisa. We were catching up and I’d mentioned that the letter would no longer clutter up her mailbox and she in the most sincere (and she was sincere) of tones said that would ruin her holiday. Ok, maybe ruin is strong language, but she said she would definitely miss it. She said that she loved the letter and looked forward to kicking back with her feet up to enjoy it every year.
What? My letter is appreciated. Someone looks forward to receiving it? Oh joy, oh joy; my letter had a purpose. It did bring holiday cheer. I could hear the Angels singing on high. I was bonified!
That year, I started out the letter telling the recipients that their hate of the letter should be directed at Lisa, because if I had one willing recipient, they all were blessed to receive the letter. Hallelujah, the gift that just kept giving. That Christmas I had it right: I mentioned each brother and sister, each of their children and their children’s children. I was proud. I had not grouped them into family or siblings; no I named them all like counting off the reindeer and the Seven Dwarfs. I was excited to head to the family Christmas gathering to see what critique there could possibly be. I’d hit the home run, the full Monty, I was to be praised for a job well done. So, Jim and I arrived to bask in the warmth of my family at my sister’s house (Karen) and before we could shake off the cold, it happened. Karen began clucking about the letter and pointed out that I’d forgotten HER daughter (Jennifer). I remembered Jennifer's husband, (Louis) and their one child at the time (Jared). Dear God, I forgot my own niece (Jennifer).
It was funny, but again I felt somehow inadequate. Could I never get it right? Was I doomed to omit a name every year to suffer the disdain of my siblings (Tommy, Donna, Susan, Karen, and Paul). No fear, the next year I attempted again, and while attempting the letter, I placed it aside.
The year was 2004 and although Christmas is my favorite holiday, there was no joy in preparing a Christmas Letter. Jim was suffering so badly from the cancer that ravaged his system that even I could not muster up a humorous moment to add to the letter. The letter was started and was saved incomplete on the computer. Now and then I’d pull it up and try to think of a way to pull it together, but no matter how I tried, I could find nothing funny about the situation at hand, nor could I figure out how to send the letter without it being a depressing regurgitation of hospital visits and chemotherapy updates. The letter was retired and has never been written since, though I did attempt it one year. That was also the year I stopped sending Christmas Cards. The cards were simply the wrapper for the bulging letter. I figured if no letter was being sent, why bother. Somehow, the joy of the letter had been snuffed out in January of 2005. Perhaps one day I’ll relight the flame.
During the springtime following Jim’s death I was visiting with Mary Frances my neighbor across the street. She had been my mother-in-law’s dearest friend and I loved Mary Frances. We would sit and reminisce about E, Jim’s mother, and Jim. Mary Frances was a great comfort to me in the months following Jim’s death. She always had room on her blue sofa for me.
Mary Frances told me funny stories about Jim growing up across the street from her and she pined for her lost husband Charlie. She remarked on more than one occasion how much she missed E and that she loved to see the lights on in my house because it brought her great comfort. I promised I’d always leave the front porch light on for her. I lost my sweet Mary Frances two years ago, and my front porch light burns yet today, all day and night.
The most special of special conversations with Mary Frances was one cool summer night when we were enjoying time together on her front porch and she told me how much she enjoyed my Christmas Letter. She said she was so happy when she started receiving it because she was able to keep up with Jim’s comings and goings and those of his cousins (Al, Dorothy, and Fred) and their wives, husbands and children (nope, not adding the names).
I realized then that for many of our friends and family members it was the one solid connection, every year, that put all of the activities of births, birthdays, weddings, graduations, funerals, travels and any other minutiae in one repository. One simple holiday letter, that I derived so much fun from, really was my annual precursor to my daily facebook updates.
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