Thursday, December 5, 2024

Christmas Letters

 Long long ago, in a land far away, that is the 50s when I was a kid, Christmas cards were a big thing. My grandfather made a rack that held about 100 and sometimes it filled up. I think it cost 3 cents to send one as long as the envelope wasnt sealed.

Before the days of social media, people kept in contact by letter. It became a tradition to send an annual Christmas letter to bring people up to date on kids and cousins etc. Some people were good at it, some people were not. My late wife loved to write letters and spent many a Sunday afternoon at the kitchen table cranking out letter after letter. Her Christmas letters were personal for many years but she got tired of repeating the same stuff so eventually went to photo copies.

We used to get Christmas letters but with Facebook and Instagram, we got fewer and fewer. I appreciate any we get. 

When she passed away, I continued to write with lots of pictures and only enough copy to hit the high spots. Twenty years worth make a nice history of my family growing up. I used to send by email and a couple by mail. This year the bulk of them went as attachments on Messenger, a few by email, and since the Post Office is on strike, my one brother is out of luck. He'll get his from my other brother at Christmas. 

Some people have no clue how to write a Christmas letter and go into every detail of the year's activities, almost day by day. People love to make fun of them and the examples below tell you why.

Click to embiggen

This is a bad photo copy of a Hallmark card. I hope you can read it. We wrote a take off and read it at our church christmas dinner. My aunt was in the congregation and told us afterwards that she thought it sounded familiar. We had in fact used some famous lines from her and her sister.



This article picks out the standard lines from typical letters and I have to admit I may be guilty of some of them, so I usually let my kids write their own paragraph.

I would love to get a letter like this. Or send one if I had the nerve

Happy Holidays to all who celebrate the 20 odd holy days from mid-November to mid-January


12 comments:

  1. I always mailed Christmas cards and xeroxed "Christmas letters" too, often with illustrations or cartoons, which I tried to make short and sweet (no more than one page) and humorous. Actually, they were forerunners of a blog post, I realize now. Nowadays, I send out a Christmas letter just to two old friends who I only touch base with once a year. Everyone else either hates Christmas letters, doesn't deserve the effort of a Christmas letter, or has died. And almost all my holiday cards are e-cards now -- and this year will ALL be, what with the postal strike.

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    1. My letters are as much for my benefit as their reipients. And I send out fewer each year too

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  2. One of my sisters in law sends out Christmas letters (by email). She leaves out everything which is less than stellar that has happened to them or their children. Which can make for a short letter.

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  3. I loved this especially the last letter! I love getting the cards but with the mailing cost....I send very few these days!

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    1. The cards I get are mainly family photos. Whichh I scan and discard.

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  4. It been sometime since I done Christmas letter. I figure sine we now have social media. We have plenty of news both bad and good.

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    1. That seems to be everyone's attitude - social media keeps us up to date

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  5. My cousin and I still keep in touch by writing letters.
    When our generation is gone it will be completely lost.
    the Ol'Buzzard

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    1. You are right. With the demise of cursive writing instruction, no one will write anything soon

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  6. I usually make my own Christmas cards... sketches, lino prints, collages. But as you know, there's currently a postal strike so I can't send cards to my international family in UK, Australia and NZ. So I'll just have to email my greetings instead. There's not much news to put in a Christmas letter as we Zoom each other every couple of weeks.

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    1. Making your own Christmas cards is something the recipients would greatly appreciate, I am sure. There really isn't much news to write about with social media keeping us up-to-date so easily. I'm can use Zoom but prefer one on one with WhatsApp.

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