Advent of the Christmas Letter
I never received a mailed, annual Christmas letter. For the unreceived, these are letters you receive from friends or family who send out a letter of how the year went.
I feel like it’s a feat to wrap up the year. When done right, the letter should evoke good feelings of the highs and lows, while inspiring the reader to reflect on their own year. When done wrong, it sounds like a rambling, incoherent confession. The emails I would send out prior to my (now defunct) holiday cards was my own version of an annual Christmas letter.
I read end-of-year newsletters with envy. Authors would rattle off their big accomplishments or mistakes. They would share their favorite things of this year.
Hallmark recently released a movie about crafting an end-of-year annual Christmas letter. In the movie, the main character and matriarch Settie Rose wants to win her town’s holiday writing contest. She’s struggling to put her year in words that will melt the hearts of all in her town. So she does what any sensible person does — she hires a writer, Juan, to write the letter for her. This is as middle of the road Hallmark story structure, and I can’t say I would recommend it, but it did hit a nerve.
I put too much emphasis on the prep work. The annual review is where you write down everything significant that happened that year. Then you go through your new years resolution and check off what worked and didn’t work. I fall flat with this task because when I really think back to it, it feels like a heavy lift. I would go through my calendar, note the significant items. I would skip the resolutions — I’ve replaced them with quarterly goals. And I lament the fact that I haven’t done any weekly or monthly reviews, so I would get discouraged to look back.
Then again, that’s steering away from the main point. The Christmas letter doesn’t care if you did that work or not. It’s a comfort letter that you send out to remind people you are still thinking about them. Of course instead of sending out a letter, I could instead have 50 conversations with 50 people that are important in my life. And maybe that’s a nice thing to do at a future date. For now, writing this is my compromise. We have put up our Christmas tree, we are drinking hot cocoa, and we are watching more middle of the road Hallmark movies.
Happy Holidays everyone!
P.S
Thanks for reading my little rant about letter writing. Let me share with you my end of year music playlist! Here it is on Spotify and YouTube!