This year’s Christmas letter carried a little urgency with it. You see last year’s letter did not meet my grandchildren’s expectations.

I have received many, many rejections as an author over the last thirty-eight years but nothing quite as disturbing as receiving rejections from the grandchildren! 🙁

You see last year was a very full year with news and pictures and I did something unforgiveable. I did not do an update on our grandchildren.

I think I spoiled them the year before when I took individual head shots of them with my camera and placed an update about each of them next to their picture. It filled the entire back side of the Christmas letter and I think they were assuming that it would occur in a similar fashion in future holiday letters.

So when that did not occur in last year’s very news and picture filled Christmas letter they expressed deep disappointment. Which in turn caused Grandpa to feel deep disappointment too along with tons of guilt. 🙁

So this year I attempted “a do over”. Otherwise how would I continue to live with myself with the memory of eight grandchildren’s rejection slips hanging over my head?

This Thanksgiving our family celebrated at our son’s house and all the grandchildren were present. During the afternoon it was picture taking time and guess what? We got a picture of all eight of the grandchildren posing together.

Immediately I began to scheme how I would transform my grandchildren’s rejections to my Christmas letter into ones of praise and adulation.

The first thing I knew I would have to do in order to accommodate descriptions of eight grandchildren was to dedicate the whole back page of the Christmas letter to that process once again.

Now at this point I must mention (admit shamefully) that I am a ‘cut and paste’ Christmas letter writer. I am somewhat computer challenged so I am forced to use the cut and paste method as I have not a clue on how to complete the process on the computer.

So I began the process by fastening the picture of the eight grandchildren on the bottom of the letter. Invisible tape works wonders to accomplish this task.

Then I went to my computer and typed out the numbers one thru eight, printed them and cut them out. I placed a tiny drop of glue on the back side of each number and fastened one number to the chest of each of our pictured grandchildren.

I proceeded to have each grandchild say something about himself/herself and identified their quotes with the corresponding number on their chests.

I thought that was quite clever. I’m not sure how the recipients of the Christmas letters felt however. But then that was not the important question.

The important question was how would the grandkids receive the newly released Christmas letter? Hopefully not eight rejections again! My writing ego could not take another negative hit.

Well I hand delivered the 2018 Christmas letter to each family as we celebrated Christmas together at our daughter’s house in Mahnomen.

Retired school teachers will do anything to save $1.50 in postage. 🙂

Seriously that hand delivery method would allow me to see my grandchildren’s reactions as each of them read the Christmas letter.

The letter got passed around between family members very quickly. I waited nervously for a negative comment. Please not another rejection! But much to my relief the letter passed inspection.

A huge weight that I had carried since last Christmas disappeared in an instant. I was a free man once again!

Now I am becoming a little concerned how I will handle the situation next Christmas. But since New Years is just around the corner and my New Year’s resolution is to give up worrying I’m going to postpone worries about next year’s Christmas letter until around the first or second week in December of 2019. 🙂

Until next time.

Oh, and one more thing I almost forgot….Happy New Year! 🙂 May it be filled with health, joy and blessings!