Christmas Cards & Letters

In this age of travel and technology, with people moving just about anywhere for jobs and things, Christmas cards are often replaced by family newsletters and e-mails. We do so want to let other people know how we’re all doing. Even if we haven’t seem them in a while, or maybe especially if we haven’t seen them for a long time. And so the family newsletter was created.

In the past just a long, written epistle, delivered by your postman, it has now evolved at least into a computer printout, often accompanied by some photos, or a colour printout of family snaps. But more often nowadays you’ll get an e-mail, complete with lots of attachments – mostly unedited, uncompressed digital family snaps that fill up your e-mailbox.

I used to think they were nice to read, and I welcomed receiving and reading them. After all, these family newsletters, whether or not they arrived by e-mail, would tell me how faraway friends, colleagues and relatives were doing. But over the past few years I’ve come to hate them.

Why? Well … sigh! It’s like this.The average letter or e-mail goes like this: “We’ve had a wonferful year. Tom had a promotion, Dick graduated cum laude from university, and Harry skipped two years at college and is now the youngest in his class. Mary is only two, but she’s already playing three musical instruments, and is moving on to the next.” Oh, they may mention some kind of mishap or misfortune here or there, but generally these letters are one success story after the other.

Now, that’s all nice for them, of course. But I’m afraid that my life looks different. I don’t want to read about promotions when I’ve  been struggling financially, with no prospect of ever getting better-paid work than I have now, and have had for the past twenty years or so. I don’t want to know about graduations when my wife and I have discovered that my children all have … well, let’s call them “special needs”. They’re wonderful, sweet children, but … well, it’s all just so hard. So I don’t want to hear about diplomas when even my eldest hasn’t been able to get just one (yet), and I have no idea if or when that will ever happen. And I certainly don’t want to hear about the child prodigies in the family, for exactly the same reason! Reading these things only makes me sad. And I hate that feeling. If it was an occasional occurrence, feeling like that, it would be acceptable. But … oh well, you get the picture.

So, successful people of the world, and especially successful people I know: Do me a favour – please just send me an old-fashioned Christmas card (the paper kind – or, if you want to be modern, a digital Christmas card). You know the kind I mean: “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Signed, your friend.” Good enough for me, believe me! I might even reciprocate and send you one as well, probably with a very similar text. It will work a lot better for me, believe me!