You know this one. It’s the extra piece of paper that falls out when you open the Christmas card. The whistle-stop tour of someone’s life over the last year.
They’ve been the subject of books, containing spoof round robin letters. They’re a staple of pre-Christmas news stories, from the BBC to the Daily Mail.
Are they there to add joy to the season? Do they simply elicit a groan?
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Christmas Past
Guilty as charged. We wrote them. We sent them. And, verily, we received them too.
The rationale goes a bit like this:
1) Want to keep in touch with people. Unaccountably, find self in pre-Facebook era but with availability of both home computer and printer.
2) Want to keep in touch with people AND avoid hand falling off rewriting same news into every Christmas card.
3) Solution: write it once, print it out, add it into cards! Done. Card can then be used for asking the recipient how they are doing instead.
It was the era when we were able to travel a bit more. When we were doing our annual bit of DIY (shortly to be upgraded to paying other people because we discovered we really weren’t very good at it). When Dan’s business was establishing itself.
So we wrote the letters. No, mostly I wrote them. Dan formatted them. (This was also the era of the homemade Christmas card. More about that another time. Clearly, this was in our pre-parenting days.)
The thing with writing an annual round-up is realising how much happens in a year. How much change there is, whether it’s change you want or change that happens anyway.
But on the plus side: the round robin was really the reason this blog began. An alternative place to put our news, without the need for printouts.
So we stopped giving the official ‘here’s how we are’ – and discovered the world of blogging about travel, food, little moments that feel special – and so on. The blog may not look much like that any more – but that’s fine too.
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Christmas Present
We still get round robin letters from friends, more often those who live at a distance and whom we see less often. So: good thing or bad thing?
My mum often opens Christmas cards and bemoans those who sign them off and say nothing about how they are doing. And, by and large, I tend to be with her on this one.
I’m really pleased that someone has remembered me, thought to write – and I’d really like to know how they are too. Especially if Christmas is our main time for catching up.
The letters are not of the ‘Felicity and her latest gymkana’, as the spoofs would have it.
They speak of the daily grind and the much anticipated high points. Of health, often in very honest terms. They celebrate and they are vulnerable.
Yes, there are photos of children. Family gatherings too, maybe. (That’s OK. That’s what gets shared on Facebook too.)
They are ordinary and they are special too. And for those who do write annually, a picture emerges over time: the evolution of a family, of personalities, talents and so on.
I’m in the camp where I now tend only to send cards to those where I can’t send an electronic greeting. That tends to be older relatives, former neighbours.
Christmas is one of those rare times where many people are going through similar preparations at the same time. They are building up to a particular day (whatever the significance it holds for them) and they are huddling in against the dark.
It makes sense to turn and reflect, even in small part. To reach out. To remember.
These days, with the cost of stamps in the UK, with the growing ease of communicating through emails, Facebook, Twitter, I may just be grateful that someone has bothered to write to me. And to say how they are doing.