The best Christmas letter

I made time to do Christmas cards this year, not as many as I could, but way more than last year when we were still digging out essentials from moving boxes. I like the old-fashioned feel of the process, though I confess my address list is neatly digitized and set up to keep track of my progress through it with a quick click. The reward comes now when I get everyone else’s cards and the inevitable Christmas letters. Most of these I love/hate. Nobody could have lives so perfect as they sound. And of course, part of the reason they are devoid of gruesome reality is that they are mass published to friends and acquaintances. On the other hand, I’m delighted to get any update on people I don’t see very often. But a dear cousin has trumped all of them this year by sending us a hand-written personal Christmas letter, complete with holly sketched in the corner! The delicious irony of this is that she and I have a mostly online relationship. We have never met in person but we chat frequently by IM. To those who complain that the digital world has laid waste old-fashioned personal interaction, I say piffle!