The Annual Christmas Letter

When I was younger, my mom got this Christmas letter from an old friend. We don't remember what it said exactly, but it was basically an update of the family, sharing what has happened in their lives in the past year. Things like, "Hubby moved out, I'm sick with terminal illness, oldest daughter just had 2nd child out of wedlock (and she's only 18), son has been mutilating animals in the backyard, and we hope our youngest son will be out of jail in time for next Christmas."

I get some great Christmas letters, from the unbelievable (like the one above), to the completely sickening sweet ("Our new white picket fence is the finishing touch on our perfect lives!") My theory is that those super-sweet ones are usually some sort of cover-up for a crappy life, "If we can convince everyone else that our lives our perfect, than maybe we'll start believing it ourselves!"

I used to send Christmas letters, basically a brief update about where we had traveled, what were were doing for work, what pets we had now, etc. I stopped doing that the year I lost my son, 1 1/2 months before Christmas. I wrote to some people in their cards, "We experienced the joy of pregnancy this year. Unfortunately, we lost our son when he was born premature and didn't survive." But those messages just went to a select few. I inserted a Christmas photo of my husband and I hiking in Arizona. I remember looking at that picture, taken just weeks before I got pregnant, and thinking how different I looked, how much innocence there was in my eyes. Every picture of myself since then looks different to me. There is often happiness, but in my eyes, there is the different look of having lost a part of myself. Since then, it feels like nearly every Christmas letter is announcing the birth of another baby.

It seems the purpose of the Annual Christmas Letter is to make sure everyone knows how great and exciting your life is. This is done by the use of many, many exclamation points, as well as filling the letter with cliches, like, "He's groing like a weed!" or "Where does the time go?" Everyone is sure to end their letter with, "We wish you a blessed Christmas and all the best of the season!"

It never ceases to amaze me that college graduates are unable to form a coherent sentence. The Annual Christmas Letters are full of incomplete thoughts, misspellings, and overall atrocious grammar. Since most of these are done on computers, you have to wonder, don't these people have spell check???

Here is my Christmas letter for this year:
"Greetings! This year, we celebrated our 10th year of marriage. Tingle was in China on that day, which could be considered symbollic of the empty distance in the marriage. For those of you who are counting, we are going into our 8th year of infertility.

China was a great adventure for Tingle, aside from having to give a local the beatdown when he stole her camera. Oh, and the horrible 24-hour diarrhea and fever she had in Hong Kong.

Tingle continues to suffer from grief and depression, even if she is pretty much the only one who still thinks about her son on a daily basis. In November, it was 3 years since the loss of their son. She tries not to talk about it too much, so as not to "upset" anyone. She continues to hide her grief with Zoloft, inappropriate outbursts of anger, spending money, sleeping, and eating junk food.

While S was given a promotion this year, he has been working 12-hour shifts since Thanksgiving. It's great to be on salary! He continues to enjoy video games and sitting around the house in his underwear.

Our cats are still with us and continue to puke on every surface of our home. We've had to start shutting them out of our bedroom after coming home to find a giant puke ball in the middle of our bed. It seems their puking gets worse and worse every year. We have decided to put off purchasing any new carpet until they kick off. We always know the holidays are near when we find little pine needles in the vomit piles.

Work for Tingle has been a lot of "work" (hahaha). Aside from a lot of travel, there was much anxiety as layoffs were announced at the end of the year. Tingle gets to stay in her job, but no raises again this year. A wonderful Christmas surprise (hahaha).

That's about all from us this year, wishing you all a wonderful holiday season!"

Of course, many GOOD things happened this year, but it wouldn't be as funny to rehash those. Besides, it would sound like I was bragging! Speaking of bragging, you will enjoy this great article from salon.com: Season of Bragging by Garrison Keillor

A classic Christmas letter has also been posted by my friend, Depressionista, on her blog: Trump says...

Finally, I share this humdinger of a Christmas letter that we received from an uncle...