My cousin’s Christmas newsletter came back marked “no such address” in spite of the fact that she lived in the same house for 28 years. When I texted her about it she said just to email her a copy.

She had to ask me twice, maybe three times because of an internal, visceral reaction – kind of like years ago when I was in China and they said it is OK to spit the bones onto the plastic table cloth.  Even after sending her the pdf, I popped another paper version in the mail.

Our Christmas newsletter tradition began when we were first married.  We were in the “one true church” and one of their distinctive was that they didn’t believe in Christmas – pagan holiday and all that and Jeremiah warns us that worshiping Christmas trees is vain (well, sort of, but not really).

I don’t know if my wife and I ever bought into the no-Christmas line completely.  Like in most legalistic environments, we knew what you could and couldn’t get away with so we made small adjustments.  When we had kids, we didn’t have a Christmas tree but baby Jesus appeared in a manger (a wooden apple box) on Christmas morning.  And we had the “New Year’s” letter that went out to family right about Christmas time.

We got the idea from Loretta’s uncle Pony who raised her.  Pony worked for the Los Angeles Times and his wife was an early adopter of PCs, which included newsletter software.  Getting into computers in that era, I was intrigued with the idea of word processor mail merges and the whole process.  Early 1987 renditions had me going to the bookstore for clip art books which I would cut out and paste in.  Later, I could drop in computer art.  We would send along a thumbnail photo or on rare occasions splurge for a special screen process to print a photo right in the letter.

Eventually, including photos was less of a problem and they now take more space than words.  Within the last ten years, I found a printer online where printing the letter in color for 200 recipients became affordable.

The letter goes out to the same basic core of people (relatives and friends for life).  As we change churches, or as people move away, die, or split up, or as people come into our lives or establish families, recipients are added or taken off the list.

I love the feedback.  People say they look forward to it.  We try to have enough self-deprecating jokes in the piece to keep it entertaining and we have a “news in brief” section so we don’t drone on about the dinner at Cracker Barrel with the Parkers or lead with superfluous words of introduction such as “well, I’m sitting down now to write our annual Christmas letter and hasn’t it been a crazy year?” – a characteristic of many laborious holiday greetings you just have to muscle through.

But best of all, we have 35 years of history captured.  Something for the kids to keep in their attic if they one day wonder where exactly they came from.

When people started emailing their family newsletter, I was disappointed.  It felt lazy to me though I had to get rid of my judgmentalism and at least appreciate the gesture as I used my ink and paper to have a copy.  This year I noticed several people posted their Christmas greetings on Facebook as a mass proclamation without addressing to specific individuals at all.  I’m not sure what to think.  It’s a whole new world out there.

One of the things I like about this time of year is receiving personal cards in the mailbox.  I enjoy the Christmas cards even it only has a sparse signature.  Someone thought of me at least for a few seconds.

But I love it when friends and relatives take the time to tell me a little bit about themselves – even the laborious writers.  It reminds me that I am not as alone as I feel.  I am not as disconnected as our ever impersonal culture wants me to believe.