The Christmas Letter

Maybe it’s the crowd I run with. Maybe it’s a sign of our times – whether economic or digital. But I miss the tradition of the Christmas Letter.

When I was a boy, one of the favored holiday treats – not quite up there with my mother’s Vanilla Kipferln cookies or my Grossmama’s precious packages of Julius Meinl chocolate wafers from Vienna , but surely on a par with the Advent wreath and singing carols by the piano – were the holiday cards that arrived with a family letter. These missives from people my parents knew from The War or from my dad’s Harvard days, but we kids only knew through their annual dispatches, were a window into another world, one of privilege, access, and refinement – or at least (even to our impressionable young minds) to pretenses thereof.

Imagine, if you will, the voice and manner of Thurston B. Howell III (from TV’s Gilligan’s Island) recounting his clan’s far-flung and glamorous exploits from the year past, recited in a warm yet holier-than-thou tone: “Susie polished her tennis game this summer, making it to the top of the Juniors Ladder at the club. Stanford will be lucky to have her next fall!” “Tommy Jr. spent his sophomore semester abroad at Colgate’s little outpost in Kitzbuhl, brushing up on his Deutsch (and his slalom skills!). Mitzie and I will be joining him there after the holidays for a week on the slopes.” “Caroline is a shoe-in for valedictorian this year at Lawrence – nothing but straight A’s for our little scholar!” “We made the most of the summer on the Vineyard… sailing nearly every day with our friends Willard and Diana, and toasting the sunsets from our verandah, martini in hand.” “The only thing better was our two weeks in Florence in October – my golly, the art, the architecture, the opera… divine!”

These weren’t the only such letters that arrived, naturally. Other old friends kept tabs with notes and photos of their trips, their children’s successes, their personal bests. And usually with a little less one-uppitiness. (In fact, my mother received just such a letter the other day, from a cousin who recounted in six pages of fine detail his 5-month retirement trip by ship from the Arctic to Antarctica. "Myamar is so much better than Thailand," he says. So apparently, the artform is not altogether dead.)

Touching base

I was reminded of these annual looks back as we spent part of the past two nights hurriedly scribbling cards and sticking on stamps to get our holiday wishes in the mail before the 24th. I was thinking about was how the form has changed, even if the desire to share has not. Today, we’re ever-more instant in our personal reportage. Ace your golf game – text-message your buddy to rub it in. Get your homework done in a flash – IM a friend to check in. Have photos of the big fish that didn’t get away – post ‘em on flickr. Have an idea? Blog it. All of the above… put it on Facebook.

It’s not that we’re communicating less. It’s just that our personal news comes and goes in bits and sound bites now. We share it quickly, like a hot potato, as if by letting the moment simmer it will lose value. That we might pause and reflect on our comings and going is, like, too much effort, too much looking back and not enough “what’s next?”.

So, I miss the annual ritual of reflection that came in those cards. I regret that we too did nothing more than “touch base” this year as we whirled through the address book to get cards in the mail. If anyone reads this blog and remembers – remind me next year to put it in a letter.