It's October, We Can Talk About Christmas

I'll be doing the annual family Christmas letter again this year. My attempts to keep the family up to speed so that I didn't have to produce the agony that is a holiday missive have failed. It appears that nobody cares enough to know what is going on in our family. You'd think this would be reason enough for me to stop the letter writing campaign, but I'm vindictive. You don't care, huh? Well, here. Read this. Again. And look like you're enjoying it while you open it and read right there at the family Christmas party where everyone is watching.

That'll teach them.

Actually, it's the aunts that request the letters each year, and most of them aren't so very computer savvy. I know, if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black I don't know what is. But at least I found my way to the blogosphere, okay? They haven't. The thought of typing in a URL address kinda breaks them out in a cold sweat. I tried not doing the letter, because in reality nobody likes them. Not even me. There are those very few that I look forward to each year, and for varying reasons. My sister-in-law does a bang-up job with hers, and from her I learned that recording the family's life does not have to be mundane and mind-numbing. And then there's the one that makes me want to poke my eyes out with a blunt object. But yet we look forward to it just to see if, somehow, it can be worse than the year before. It rarely fails to disappoint. All others fall somewhere in between.

And on another holiday related note, we got Aunt Clara's Christmas card exceptionally early this year. It was still September when that little piece of holiday cheer arrived. This is a new record. Maybe next year she'll go for Independence Day. Nothing would say happy holidays quite like getting a snow covered postcard in July's mailbox.

Dear Aunt Clara. She's always been The One in the family. You know the type; everyone has them. (We have many, but she manages to stand out above the crowd.) She hasn't bought cards in decades, but instead recycles the cards that are given to her. This is a great idea for those on a fixed income, and she has it down to an art. Sort of. The brilliant part is that she cuts off the fronts of each card and recycles them as post cards, thereby getting around that part where they were lovingly signed by the original sender. The problems started when she forgot who sent her which card. This would not normally be a huge kind of problem, except for the year I put a picture of my kids on the front of the cards I'd sent. That's the card I got from her the next year.

I'm guessing this kind of stuff happened a little too frequently, because now I notice she's using cards from outside sources. Her mother (my gram) remarried a few years back. (Like 12, but when it's your Gram remarrying it's recent history, okay?) Gram lives in Seattle now, and must be sending in her cards from New Grampa's side of the family. Aunt Clara's card this year had written in the margin, almost hidden in the snowy trees, Seattle Recycled.

My family knows how to do Christmas up right.