For twenty years, I’ve sent out an annual Christmas letter along with a photo. I don’t feel old enough to have been writing it that long, but the perception of age is another story. I started this tradition when my then-fiancé and I were living 500+ miles away from the nearest family while he was in law school. This was pre-Facebook, pre-social media. Email existed, but it wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is today. Writing a letter still felt like the best way to keep in touch with family scattered across the country. And sending a letter at the holidays - at the end of the year - felt appropriate. A way to sit back and reflect on all we’d done that year and where we were going.
The first few years there were lots of changes. My husband was in law school and then we moved and I was in grad school. Over the next few years we moved several times as we settled in to career jobs, he passed the Bar exam, and I passed the CPA exam. We rented condos, rundown houses with killer views of the water, houses with plumbing that had a disturbing tendency to back up into the basement. All these moves got chronicled in the annual Christmas letter.
I was always keen to keep it short and sweet. I remember my parents getting letters when I was young that ran on for pages. A comprehensive humble brag of every family member’s accomplishments. I vowed to keep my to a single page.
The letters continued as we started having babies. We bought our first house and stopped moving, we’d settled into careers, so there wasn’t a lot to report there. But the babies. They were always changing! The letter stayed one page long, but there was less and less about me and my husband. Maybe a quick note on promotions or how many years of marriage we’d celebrated. But when I came to the end of each year, it was my kids and the way they had changed through the year that really captured my attention and the line space in my letter.
2023 was the 20th year I sat down to write my letter. I was so on top of things this year! Photos intentionally taken so they’d crop correctly. Cards ordered early enough that I got the early-bird pricing. And then when they arrived a month before Christmas…they sat. It wasn’t until December 27th that I finally got them mailed. And that was after struggling to write that letter. I was committed to keeping that letter to one page, but this year the format just felt wrong. There was no way to summarize everything that had happened in this year in just one page. I wanted to put myself back into the letter. I wanted to acknowledge the incredibly difficult work that my husband does in support of our family. I wanted to address all the things my girls had struggled with and overcome this year. (The pandemic might be over, but for these young people three really messed up years don’t just get forgotten overnight.) The letter veered dangerously close to humblebrag. I just couldn’t shave it down and keep it meaningful, I couldn’t keep it short and feel like I was sharing anything meaningful.
And then I took a long hard look at the recipients. The list of who’s gotten a Christmas letter from us has morphed over the years. Friendships have come and gone, grandparents have aged and passed on. The list had grown to include a number of people that live in the same town and know what my daily life looks like. Did they really want to sit down and read the recap of my year? The list also includes a lot of my husband’s extended family who - after 20 years of marriage - I still haven’t met and probably won’t given the tenuous connections with these far-flung relatives. They’d never met me or my children. They hadn’t seen my husband in almost three decades. Did they really want to sit down and read the recap of my year?
I’ve gotten feedback from a few people over the years about my letter. My bestie who lives 500 miles away likes to read it even though we talk constantly through the year and not much of the letter is new to her. My aunt was the only person who still had a copy of my letter from three years ago when I lost my digital copy. But so many people never acknowledged it that I sort of felt like I was spending all this time to write, print, stuff envelopes, stamp and address them only to send them out into the void.
This year it felt like the time had come to retire the letter. Instead, I’m writing here. It won’t be a once-a-year production, and it obviously won’t just be family reading what I’m posting. I’ll still keep the humblebrag to a minimum, but I won’t try to limit myself to just one page. You’ll either be interested in what I have to say, or you won’t, but it’s time to stop limiting myself.
So, goodbye Christmas letter. You were a lovely tradition for many years. I may feel differently come next December, but right now I just feel relief that that chapter of my life has come to its natural conclusion. Something new is coming and I can’t wait to see what it is. I hope you’ll join me.
Cheers - Em