Christmas Letters

'Tis the season, and that means it's time for me to get busy writing the Christmas letter. It's a letter that sort of reviews the year and gives an update on what is going on at our house. My parents always included a Christmas letter with the cards sent to out of town friends and family, so I guess I've always done it too. 

It seems everyone has an opinion about holiday letters. My dear husband is one of the people who happens to hate letters like this. He thinks including one with our card is simply unnecessary. Maybe at some point in his life he was subjected to one of those multi-page holiday letters that reads like a resume' and has the effect of a sleeping pill.

I happen to be one of those people who loves to receive letters along with holiday cards. It's great to catch up on the lives of cousins or former classmates that I rarely get to see. The biggest disappointment to me is opening an elegant foil edged card that has a sentimental verse printed on it, and nothing but a signature at the bottom. 

I realize that in an ideal world, one would get out a pen and hand-write an individualized letter to each person on their list. I will probably get around to that the year I start creating handmade paper from recycled dryer lint or sewing all my own clothes from repurposed Goodwill fabric.

Knowing how he feels, I write one anyway, but proceed cautiously, taking care to re-read and revise, removing any hint of a brag. I probably overcompensate actually. Over the years, I recorded the time he gave one of our sons a shoulder ride and ended up breaking a light fixture with our little one's head. Instead of creating an illusion about our perfect lives, I tell about the time the Christmas tree fell over or the time I took the kids' photo in front of the decorated tree, but failed to notice the small pile of cat poop under the tree which was in every shot.

A picture perfect family...we are not. And I'm pretty sure my letters reflect that. After all, what's Christmas without a little comic relief?