IT'S that time of year again when we receive that strange hybrid of American literature: the family Christmas letter. Here’s a form letter
friends won’t forgetThe Christmas letter evolved as a way to bring everyone in the world up to date on everything that has been happening in your family for the previous year. It basically is an admission that the recipient is not important enough to the sender to receive timely dispatches on developments within the sender's family. It also is an admission that the sender feels guilty about this and is trying to cover his or her tracks by regurgitating all the key events in the sender's life in one fell swoop.
Of course, this guilt is unnecessary because it assumes - usually wrongly - that the recipient of the yearly letter is even vaguely interested in the sender's miserable existence.
The advent of e-mail may eventually lead to the extinction of the holiday letter. Why send out a long, boring letter at Christmas when you can bore your friends daily in little electronic info chunks?
But for now, the letters exist. And some people still don't grasp how to write them. So, as in the past, I offer this handy, dandy, circle-the-appropriate-answer Christmas letter for the creatively impaired:
DEAR [ Friends, Amigos, Former cell mates],
What a [ busy, hopeless, stinky] year 1996 has been for the [ ---YOUR NAME ---] clan!
The high point of the year was our trip to [ Disneyland, the Trenton Federal Institution for the Criminally Insane, MacBab's World 'O Scabs]. The rides were [ fabulous, shocking, vaguely nauseating]. We plan to go back again when [ Grandpa is up for parole, Billy learns to wear pants, hell freezes over].
As you may have heard, our youngest son has become [ engaged, a suspect in the Olympic Park bombing, our youngest daughter]. He appeared on [ America's Most Wanted, the cover of Modern Primate Magazine, the roof of the Toledo Holiday Inn with a deer rifle.] Boy, were we [ delighted, slightly confused, interrogated extensively]!
Our little [ girl, hamster, rug mite] is growing up so fast. Just last month she [ spoke her first word, translated the Bible into Esperanto, dated the entire Bellevue High School Marching Band]. We are so proud of what she has accomplished since [ last Christmas, doctors removed the parasite from her upper intestine, the allegations of ritual animal sacrifice blew over].
I have been working hard to [ get my G.E.D., contact Dr. Kervorkian, channel the ghost of Elvis through my toaster oven]. It's been extremely [ hard, stimulating, icky]. When you are my [ age, weight, astrological sign] it is difficult to [ boogie, hold water, determine pi to the 1,000th digit].
Uncle [ Ralph, Judy, Rug Mite] is having some [ success, failure, small children for dinner] during his around-the-world [ cruise, flight from justice, search for extraterrestrials]. He was [ greeted warmly, rudely strip-searched, wrestled to the ground] in [ Liberia, a largely unknown area of Yugoslavia known as Weenerville, Boris Yeltsin's dacha] after [ arriving, gut-punching Mother Teresa, performing unnecessary bladder surgery on local livestock].
Well, that about wraps things up. We hope your year has been as [ rewarding, gut-wrenching, relatively indictment-free] as ours. Remember, [ God, Buddha, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg] watches over [ all of us, hopeless ding-dongs like you, people with excessive body odor].
Here's hoping that the new year brings [ happiness, heaps of money, absolutely no mention of O.J. Simpson] and [ world peace, reasonably priced lawn care products, absolutely no mention of O.J. Simpson.]
Sincerely,
[ Your Name, My Name, O.J. Simpson].
