Christmas Letter...

This tradition started for me five Christmases ago. As December began, I realized that I wanted to write something to let my friends know how our year had gone. In those early days of being a parent on my own, I still felt totally under water. Work was a bear, I had been living in a big quiet house 70% of the nights alone, and so much about my life felt like I was just beginning, and yet still very adolescent in so many ways.

In looking back, those days were ones upon which I built the months and years to come, and frankly it was a pretty bad foundation. I think about those days, and my fears and desires controlled me far more than I controlled them. But the effort of writing a letter to my friends about my life was something that when I started it seemed like a good way to get perspective, and let everyone know I was ok, and so were the kids.

Let me say, for the record, that as a general rule, Christmas update letters are not well-received. I have both heard of that broad-based opinion, and occasionally observed it in action. But, in my experience, they usually aren't that bad if you view them almost as oral history projects. It's the kind of thing that our parents or their parents would never do, but they would keep the history in some form of story, passed down. Laura Ingalls did the best of capturing the reality of the times, and sharing in a form that others could appreciate. And now, we do it, and tolerate it, because for many folks, it is the only way to see their entire lives — not just the parts that we actually participate in (work, church, social group A).

That first letter I sent out garnered a pretty good response from my friends, and I really din't think anything about it. The next Christmas rolled around, and I put it together again, and sent it out.

By the time the 2008 letter rolled out, and it was late coming out for a number of reasons, I had begun to get requests for the letter, or the occasional, "Hey... I didn't get the Christmas letter this year, and didn't know if I had fallen off your list" email or phone call. It was the only one in which I introduced someone else, and nearly everyone could see something different. In fact, I would say in that letter was the first time that I really felt like I was maturing as well, and could see a seriousness in so much of what I was doing.

The last two years have really begun to reflect my developing art skills -- both with the photography, and the ability to write in a memoir style, that are natural fits for this style of communicating stories. My letter went out on Friday and I have been blessed with a number of extraordinary responses from friends and family about their own years, and a reminder that love is something shared and not hidden.

And here, I've learned that living life is something shared in a way that no one can ever take away. So.... Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and all that jazz.... Oh, and here's the letter.