The Christmas Alphabet

I discovered at an early age that wherever "hip" was located, I was always going to be in the next room. Or maybe "cool" was just being sequestered at an Unknown Location. In any case, I wasn't very old before I came to terms with -- maybe even embraced -- my nonhipness.

Perhaps it was inevitable anyway, for a skinny kid with glasses, always the youngest in my class, not athletically gifted, but pretty successful academically. Compound that with the fact that, as someone in a position to know said recently, I was born old; all of this is unlikely to add up to someone who will ever be anointed as an Arbiter of Style.

So instead, when other kids wore jeans & sneakers to school, I was wearing doubleknits (OK, I just dated myself) and sports shirts and dress shoes. When the popular kids were waiting for class to be over, I was the kid with his hand up -- not just to answer the question but to be first to answer. And although I was, as you might guess, not invited to the cool parties, I'm pretty sure that the playlist at those parties did not include Barry Manilow.

And I'm equally convinced: they don't know what they were missing!

With all of that, you'd think I would be prepared to land on the Unhip List yet again, but I was a bit caught off-guard this year by all the abuse heaped on writers of Christmas letters. Both the comics pages and several columnists I've read recently have had caustic things to say about the level of truth contained in such letters, as well as the level of interest on the part of their readers.

I suppose some people probably write to induce envy; perhaps some get bogged down in minutiae unintelligible to 'outsiders'; maybe some test the tensile strength of the truth. As for me, I got the idea to write an annual letter from my mom, and I've been writing our family's letter since... well, I think the first couple were printed on a dot-matrix printer, for anyone who's ever seen one of those in a museum. I try my best to make them interesting for all possible readers (of course, I try the same with the blog, and look how that's working out); I also resist the temptation to exaggerate or even brag. And as I write, I always keep in front of me a few specific goals, stated here in no particular order:

• A basic recap: This part may be more for me, but I like to summarize the most important parts of the year (very) briefly.
• A shorthand character sketch: Since our marriage we have lived in 4 towns in 3 states, and made & left behind friends all along the way. The letter is a way for them to see what we've been up to, as a window on who we are now (well, not me -- I haven't changed since I was about 7). This is particularly important for our more recent friends, many of whom are very fond of our kids. I labor the hardest to paint the kids' picture: not of "what they do", but more of "what they're like".
• Coherently written: Especially in the years B.B. (Before Blog), the letter served as an outlet for my literary impulses. My wife is grateful that the release valve of the blog has lessened my inclination to write jokes in the Christmas letter. Actually, I am too; it saves me the trouble, since she always took them all out anyway.
• A spiritual undertone: I have always tried to make it clear to our readers (not all of whom are Christians or church-affiliated) that for our family, Christmas is much more than a jolly fat guy in a red suit. I try not to command anyone to find a Bible and open to Luke chapter 2, since not everyone is thrilled with a full-fledged sermon in their mailbox. Still, there's always the chance that some reference might touch a heart in some way.
• A gentle prod for response: I don't think we're alone in this, but of the people whose company we enjoy who we don't see regularly, only perhaps a tenth are in any kind of regular touch. I always put a commercial at the end of the letter saying, please contact us -- maybe the unintended subtext is that "your news can't be any more boring than ours", I don't know -- and it does pay off some percentage of the time. That alone is worth it....

It seems to me that people who carp on the great American tradition of the Christmas letter ought to keep in mind the difficulty of the task. Not only am I trying to capture an entire year (in this case, 4 person-years) in a space of 800 or so words, but I have to do it with an alphabet that has a letter missing. Or at least, it seems like everywhere I go, I keep hearing “Noel”!

Love, and puns, from our house to yours... <:-)~