Season's Greetings!

Last year around this time, I received the following email:
If I get one more pesky Christmas letter telling me in nauseous detail that on the second of January 2005 it rained and on the third it didn't, describing their husband's brilliant doings/redundancy/performance/Viagra requirements, their children's education/homework/sports prowess/exam results/love life/drug habits, and filling me in on all their beastly grandchildren's first teeth/burp/nappy change/word, I might do something I will regret.

I share the writer’s sentiments. Now that everyone has a computer, Christmas year-in-review emails/newsletters are beginning to take on the patina of an established tradition. Ever noticed how some seem to be written by a ghost writer in the third person or the by family dog (ever so cutesy) with the aid of a Microsoft X-mas newsletter template? Occasionally the names of the family members will be penned in but more often the letter starts with a generic salutation like, “Hello Folks!!!”

Bah! Humbug! Frankly I’m not interested in every detail of your kitchen/bathroom/bedroom makeover. And hey, does everyone’s kid ace every thing? Surely not! And as for Chewy, your eighteen-year-old Labrador retriever who you finally decided to euthanize? Okay, so he died on the way to the vet. I’m real sorry but geez, you’ve been sending me Christmas cards for eons, I haven’t seen you for yonks and who knew about Chewy? Now about that vacation at your time share in Kruger National Park…wow, that’s impressive!

As for the extensive description of this year’s weather, I live on this planet too. I know the summers are hot and the winters are cold. I don’t happen to remember the weather from one year to the next but that’s because I don’t make a point of it and those who do, don’t need to be reminded, or do they?

Then there are the lists of people who visited, which read like the Queen’s social calendar. Give me a break! I don’t know all your pals but I’m sure they know who they are and probably remember the visit themselves.

Commenting on these views, one of my email correspondents said: “I know what you mean. There are one or two that are very well done; and there are some that make you want to puke. The worst, I think, are the humble boasting ones to the effect that we have so many blessings, and then going on and on, in detail about all the blessings—the trip to Antarctica, meeting with the Pope, the kid who has to choose between Harvard, Stanford or M.I.T. But the problem is, one doesn't want to air one's dirty linen. In such an impersonal forum, I'm not going to talk about my depression, our marriage counselling, Ken’s failing grades, Evelyn’s teenage pregnancy or the dismay my husband Bob feels over Susie getting married to a man whose faith isn’t Bob’s, or worse, has no faith.”

My guess is that these mundane but ever so newsy missives are written more for the writer than the reader and would be a more honest year’s appraisal if the writer never intends to mail them. Should you still have the urge to write your year in review, let ‘er rip! Then stuff it --in your own Christmas stocking not in an envelope or inbox addressed to me. Pull-ease.