Dear Family and Friends,
Welcome to our 2007 2008 family Christmas newsletter – a seasonal offering of anecdotes and braggadocio, served up with mind-numbing detail and a generous helping of presumption that you actually care about my Aunt Minnie’s hip replacement.

Believe me, we’ve tried to come up with a better approach to our annual missive, but every year we end up writing pretty much the same turgid tome as the year before.

And we’re not alone. According to a study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, holiday newsletters have become an established genre of writing, with common themes and elements that define both their form and function. They’re nothing if not predictable.

In fact, the study compiled a checklist of 80 tried-and-true techniques that writers of holiday newsletters use to make their lives sound more accomplished and exciting than they really are.

Not that we condone all of these techniques. For example, the study found that some writers go so far as to “sprinkle the names of celebrities in their holiday letters as a way to elevate their own importance, the excitement of their own lives.”

That’s PATHETIC. We stopped celebrity name-dropping last winter, around the same time we bumped into Danny Glover while checking into a trendy hotel in Manhattan.

Still, since the formulaic holiday newsletter has now been validated as a legitimate form of correspondence — and since our life is so busy and hectic — maybe this year we’ll just cut and paste some of the generic items from the checklist in the study, rather than take time to write anything specific or meaningful.

Starting with Item #1:
A claim of how uniquely busy and hectic our life is, compared to yours.

Item #2:
Mentioning work or professional activities. Hey, what could be more compelling than an in-depth account of our sidewardly mobile careers?

Item #3:
Describing a vacation. Since you’ve never been to a place as exotic and off-the-beaten path as Disney World, allow us to relate every waking moment of our fabulous trip.

Item #4:
A report on our children’s clever actions or words. Yep, kids say the darnedest things, and lucky for you, we’ve got a year’s worth of transcripts.

Item #5:
Family photograph. For privacy reasons, I’ve refrained from posting the photo, but trust us, it’s blurry, and the cat has red-eye.

Those are just a few of the highlights from our endlessly fascinating year, in handy checklist format. It’s a little sketchy, but if you know our family well, you can fill in the blanks. If you don’t know our family well, maybe you shouldn’t be on our mailing list (you and 300 of our other closest friends).

Oh – I almost forgot!
Item #6:
An expression of best wishes appropriate for the holiday season. That’s the reason we send these things out in the first place, isn’t it?

P.S. Remind me to tell you about Aunt Minnie’s hip replacement.

Posted by Peter Moore