Everyone seems to have an opinion on the Way It Should Be, don’t they? There Is A Way, it would seem, to write a Christmas letter, to send a holiday greeting, to make annual contact with loved-ones far-flung. And everyone’s opinion is Different.
For example, some people feel Absolutely Certain that the Christmas letter should not be longer than One Full Page. I break that rule routinely, but there it is. I realize that people might not want to read a missive that long, but I like to read them, no matter how long they are. Sadly but truly, these letters are often the Only News I have from some people all year. I think I can spare ten minutes to read two sides of a piece of paper.
Still, when I saw him, I had to apologize to my dear Rachel’s father-in-law Peter Stine. “Sorry,” I told him, “but my Christmas letter is more than one page this year,” I said. “Well,” he retorted, in his doesn’t-miss-a-beat-Peter-Stine-way, “I’ll just have to read it in more than one sitting.”
So be it.
Personally, I love those sittings. No other time of the year does my mailbox fill with such meaningful correspondence. Junk mail, for a few brief weeks, is the exception rather than the rule, and I tote it all inside and dump it on the dining room table, where I sort the wheat from the chaff and then, armed with a cup of tea, sit quietly and read. The sitting comes to an end Too Soon, no matter how long the sitting is.
To my horror, and to my sympathetic understanding, a few friends have begun campaigning for electronic Christmas correspondence. Save a tree!, right? Why flood our mail systems with missives that can just as easily be sent on-line and include dozens of photographs?
Yes, I see that point All Too Clearly. But it’s the romantic in me (fool, I know) that wants a Real, Old-Fashioned letter. In my mailbox. Sent with a stamp. And a photo, if you please.
The photos I mount on our pantry doors with sticky-tack. We have two of these doors, bi-folding, and their paneled surface makes for a perfect display.
But we do have an opinion about these.
“Who are these people?” Bill said this season, on more than one occasion, standing in front of our photo gallery. “I don’t know who half these people are,” he said, and he made a guess as to the identities of two little girls sitting with Santa Claus.
“No,” I told him. “That’s not ____________ and _______________,” I said, “that’s ______________ and ________________. You know, __________________ and ________________’s children.”
“Oh,” he said.
And then, “Why don’t people send pictures of themselves anymore? Why do they only send photos of their children? I don’t know these people,” he said again, and walked away to pour himself some more coffee.
Point taken. And I agree with him. Odd, don’t you think? to have our Christmas letter photos peopled with people We Don’t Know and, in some cases, Have Never Met, while their parents, the ones we miss and would love to see and Haven’t Seen In Years, make Absolutely No Appearance???
We have no recourse but to assume that these invisible parents have themselves become frowzy and veinous and so Have No Wish to Be Seen.
We always send a photo of our Entire Family.
Rachel, the one whose father-in-law is the double-sitting Peter Stine, stood in front of my photo gallery a few weeks ago. She chuckled.
“I think it’s so funny when people send pictures of the children and the parents,” she said. I realized that her Christmas card photo, which hung at that moment just in the proximity of her left knee-cap, included only her two sons. “Once you have kids, I think you should just send a picture of your kids. No one wants to see the parents. I just think it’s funny,” she said.
Which provoked, as you might imagine if you are a friend of mine, Quite A Conversation. She sees my point, I believe and I, to an itty-bitty degree, see hers.
But if you send me a photo of Just Your Children next year, you’ll know what I’m thinking.
