IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE--WHEN YOU MAKE IT UP!

Task 45, December 12 to December 19

“Only bad writers think that their work is really good.” Anne Enright

So here I am at Eisenhower Medical Facility Imaging Center at 6:45am on Thursday. It’s nothing dire, just my confounded unhealable ankle, but still, the Imaging Center waiting area is decidedly NOT where I want to be at 6:45am on a Thursday, especially when they inform me that I may have an hour wait, which of course puts me on into a snit—but, as I am not one to squander any spare moment, I decide to work on my Christmas letter.

You all know what a Christmas letter is—if not, let me explain: it’s the letter that’s folded up and sent with a Christmas Card. They present themselves as innocuous light and airy notes to update friends and relatives as to what what’s transpired, family-wise, over the previous year, but in fact they are long—often single-spaced—hysterically overwrought screeds full of half truths, gross exaggerations and misrepresentations, with only a faint relationship to the truth.

Let me break down a Christmas letter we got yesterday. It was sent by my wife’s cousin (I’ll call her Stacy), Stacy, her husband Henry, daughter Sill (short for Celia) 16, and Henry Jr., 21, live in Panama City, Florida, the epicenter of the Redneck Riviera, where poached eggs are deep fried and, in the last election, three of four people crossed out both Trump and Biden and wrote in Tim Tebow.

CHECK OUT OUR PODCAST, “OLD PEOPLE THIS WEEK” ON YOUTUBE, SPOTIFY AND APPLE PODCASTS.

Stacy’s letter started out honestly enough: “Well, 2025 was an amazing year!”…because it was, but not in the happy sense. She could/should have stopped there, and just signed off with “Merry Christmas”, but no…“Henry senior decided to take an early retirement!”, she crowed proudly. Yes, that’s one way to spin the fact that Henry, who worked at the DMV, was caught sitting on the copy machine, bared-assed, and drunk.

And that was just the beginning… “And Sill, our baby, had a health scare (she was pregnant) and with some divine help (a doctor in Atlanta) is whole again (and locked in her room)!”

“And Henry Jr., who is a sophomore at Panama City College (he repeated his freshman year 3 times) and majoring in Econ (HOME Econ), is interning with Florida State Department of Transportation (Henry Jr. ingested ecstasy at a rave in Pensacola, broke into a llama ranch and accosted a calf named Caesar, got kicked in the head for his troubles, and was sentenced to six months probation and forced to perform clean up duty on the highway).

And she didn’t stop there. She raved about the family trip to Paris (Texas), the house remodel (necessitated by the fire damage caused by Sill, who fell asleep with a lit cigarette in her hand) and then, finally, revealed her personal coup de grace: “I was presented with the prestigious ‘mom of the year’ award from my local women’s organization! (the Al-Anon mother’s group).”

Mercifully, she ended there, and signed off with a breezy “May ‘26 be terrifics”, which rhymed, but offended me, poetically.

I looked up at the clock. I still have 15 minutes to fill. So I better get busy on the Shore Family letter. Here’s goes:

Wow, 2025! What an amazing year!.........

TASK:

Write your Christmas letter.