The Holiday Letter

We've all received them. We've all chuckled at how pretentious they are, how silly some of the entries are, and wondered how much is actually true and how much is wild embellishment. You know what I'm talking about. The ubiquitous holiday letter tucked inside some of the holiday cards we receive this time of year. The ones that sound like this:

Happy Holidays from the Porter-Carter family! Yes, another eventful year has passed by filled with blessings and wonderful events. Let me catch you up on what we've been up to this year.
Robert is in his senior year at Harvard and has been busily applying for medical school at Yale, Penn and of course, Harvard. Stanford is his backup school, but he'd much rather remain on the east coast. He is captain of the crew team again this year, and he's also been playing indoor soccer in an intermural league. This past summer he spent 6 weeks in Peru helping Doctors Without Borders vaccinate children in the mountains. It was an amazing experience and he's hoping to work this summer in Afghanistan if the Taliban doesn't take over the country. He's dating a new girl that we all adore. She's from Grosse Point and is a junior at Wellesley. She's the most delightful young lady and we're hoping that she might be a permanent member of our family in the near future.

Stewart is enjoying his sophmore year at Yale. He's still very involved in theatre and was the lead in Merchant of Venice last spring. This summer he worked on sets at Jacobs Pillow in the Berkshires. He's doing fantastically well academically and brought home all A's at the end of freshman year. We're so proud of him. Still no love interest, but he's still young.

Rebecca is in her last year at Ms Porters School for Girls, and is frantically deciding where to apply for college. She's already applied for early admission at Yale, and is also applying at Smith, Wellesley, Penn, and Brown so far. She isn't interested in a big city, but we were all hoping she might look at Colombia. We took her on a trip up to New England last spring for the college tours. She hated MIT and thought Harvard was 'too cramped", whatever that means. She is still playing cello in the school orchestra and is on the gynmastics team, swim team, and plays field hockey. She's captain of the lacrosse team this year. This year she's become very interested in fashion design and has started making clothing for the local children's shelter. Right now she's making 100 hats, scarves, and mitten sets for the shelter kids in beautiful polar fleece. Each scarf and hat is monogrammed with the child's name. They're lovely.

Doug was promoted to senior VP of economic development last spring and is suitably challanged in his new position. He's enjoying the job, but the commute is killing him. We're thinking that once Rebecca is in college we might purchase a small apartment in town where we would live during the week. It doesn't matter where I am, as I can write my historical romance novels from anywhere. I just need a good library for research.

We lost Scruffy last winter after 15 years of canine loyalty and love. After a few weeks we decided we didn't want to remain dogless and picked up two puppies from a local breeder of schnoodles, a combination of miniature schnauer and miniature poodle. We named them Frick and Frack and they are delightfully bad.

Last year we redid the kitchen, replacing our old appliances with brand new stainless steel Vikings, and put in new counters and cabinets. We added on 200 sq feet to the back of the house for a kitchen extension and greenhouse, so I can grown all my own herbs for cooking. I love it! Our next project is to redo the patio out back with brickwork and a victorian knot garden of heirloom roses, which we'll start in the spring.

Our family sends warm holiday greetings to you!

With love,

Bitsy, Doug, Robert, Stewart, Rebecca and Frick & Frack Porter-Carter

Wow, that was fun to write. A lot more fun than my real family letter which would be about illness, financial woes, and a lot of sibling strife.

So, lets be honest here. Do you write these holiday letters? And if you do, are you honest or just highlighting the best parts of your life, and leaving out the negative stuff? Do you think people love or hate these letters?

I love them. I don't write them, but when I get them I think they're a riot. I never take them seriously so I can see the humor in them, but then I worry that I'm silently passing judgement on the sender's family. I don't mean to do that. I just can't seem to take them seriously.

I often wonder about the motives of people that send these letters. I know they're a traditional part of the whole holiday card thing. But I have to question whether or not they're tongue and cheek to begin with, or am I just too curmudgeonly to see them as anything but humerous?

What do you think?

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The Holiday Letter

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