The Christmas Letter. Do you write one? As a 30-something, I remember the excitement of getting the letters in the mail. They came from cousins, aunts and uncles, and family friends. Handwritten of course – it was the 80’s and 90’s. They told of family vacations, births, deaths, graduations, and the highlights of the year. They were part of the Christmas tradition.
I do still write the traditional letter. Some friends have shifted to just a card, some go email, and others stick an update on facebook. I’m NEVER the first to get the letter out and occasionally don’t get it mailed until the end of the month. I get giddy when I open Christmas cards and display them happily on my desk for a full month. They start at the beginning of December and usually end mid-January. The number varies by year.
Fast forward to 2010. That was the year we had our first child. Suddenly, I had something to write about. Before that, all my friends and I were doing the same things. We were almost all married, but none of us had kids. We enjoyed tailgating together and college football and basketball games. We traveled on spontaneous vacations that had no set stopping points and flitted from one place to another. There was no point in writing about any of this because we actually rendezvoused more than once or twice a year.
2010: after a very long (ok so almost all pregnancies are the same length…) and fun filled (lots and lots of all day vomiting – no “oh you’re pregnant!” glow for me) pregnancy, our first child was born. The months FLEW by and suddenly it’s Christmas letter time! Do I smash it full of pictures of our little guy? Of course I do. They don’t want to read about me vomiting or how I’m now an expert on baby poop colors. The masses just want to see pictures of this kid! So I obliged with pictures and short captions.
2011: more pictures and a few cute stories.
2012: Baby #2! If it’s possible to believe, there was more vomiting with the second child, but I left that out. I was the most pregnant lady at the pool on 4th of July. It was so hot and I was just a few days shy of 40 weeks. Some friends and I took our crew to the DQ for ice cream before the pool. I couldn’t fit in the booth. Yikes. That actually did make the Christmas letter… I also smushed a TON of pictures of my two littles into the Christmas letter that year.
2013: More kid pictures. More cute stories. She’s walking. He’s building things and jumping off of couches. Tra la la la la!
2014… 2015… You get the picture. And here we are 2016. What do I write? Do I go timeline? Do I go humorous? Do we focus on the kids and gloss over my husband and I? Do I go with the traditional Christmas pictures or mix it up with refrigerator magnet pictures without a Christmas message? So many options!!!
I guess I’ll just have to see where my mood leads me. That’s part of the joy of being on the receiving end of one of our letters. You get whatever I write and mail accompanied by a few toothy grins in nice clothes.
Laugh.Cry.Giggle.Smile. 