When I was a kid Christmas was a time of the year to correspond with friends and relatives especially those who lived far away. Long distance phone calls were too expensive so letter writing became the main manner of staying in touch.
Today’s Christmas card is a family picture, often with family members dressed alike and standing in front of a wooden barn door badly in need of paint. A family pet or two may also be included and they may even be dressed festively or at least have a bright red bow around their necks.
During my growing up years much more labor went into sending season’s greetings. The greetings consisted of a gaily decorated Christmas card but then a personal note sharing the family’s happenings during the past year was included. I might add a three cent stamp was required to send it also.
I have a hard time incorporating new traditions so as the holiday season approaches my thoughts do not turn to Kathie and I posing in front our rustic red shed smiling for a professional photographer. No, the urge to write the annual Christmas letter begins to churn in my mind.
And it can’t be just any Christmas letter. I refuse to write a letter that tells our every move over the past year. A letter like that will insure that the reader will begin snoring half way through it. My letter must be entertaining and my feelings would be hurt if I discovered that no one chuckled a time or two as they read it.
Computers and copy machines have made the letter writing process less strenuous. But because I have never become a master computer operator I still use the “cut and paste” technique in developing the final product. I can do amazing things with a scissors and a roll of scotch tape! 🙂
Every Christmas Season our family Christmas letter became my personal master piece. So much so that when the holidays were over I couldn’t part with the original. After several years of moving the accumulating letters around my office I got the idea of putting the letters in plastic sleeves and putting them in a notebook for safe keeping.
That practice started probably in the late 1980’s. Several of the early letters were lost but my collection contains from 1985 to the present time. I’ve accidently produced a history of Kathie and my married life. The notebook contains a record of over 30 years of our family’s history.
There are pictures of weddings, births, graduations and family gatherings. If someone has a question about what year something occurred in the past we drag out the old family history book and look it up.
We can watch the grandkids grow up in the book. My hair turns from a beautiful dark brown to snowy white as the pages are turned. Our three kids make us empty nesters and go out into the world to start their own families. The first grandchild graduates from high school. The family history book captures all of this. The memories the pages reveal are priceless.
Probably one of the most unusual announcements to occur in the annual Christmas letter was in the 2015 edition. For the two winters previous to 2015 the drain field for our septic tank had frozen solid. We were in need of a new septic system. We celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary in 2015 and the politically correct gift for the 45th anniversary should have been a sapphire. Instead we agreed to spend $10,000 on a new septic tank.
During the non-functioning septic tank months I was forced to build an adult potty chair that we used during those two trying times. Our pumpkin ground received a whole different kind of fertilizer those two winters!
I have been trying to sell the potty chair in the last two Christmas letters but no one has contacted me about it. Maybe this blog will do the trick! 🙂
So that’s how I accidently wrote a history book, a history book that hopefully continues to get thicker and thicker as the years go by.
I’ve published six books during my writing career and now I’ve unintentionally written a seventh book. Publication is an option but you know what? I don’t think the sales would be there unless there happens to be several thousand readers looking for a potty chair. 🙂
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Until next time.
