Our Holiday Letter

I am always amazed each year around Thanksgiving time, when the first holiday letter appears in our mailbox. Whoever sends these early letters (and you know who you are) not only has their act together sufficiently to write and send the things out, they also already know that nothing worth mentioning is going to happen in late November or during the entire month of December. So why not get those letters out there?

Now THAT'S organization.

Here on Indigo Hill, we take a more natural approach. Waiting until the spirit moves us before we actively ignore the need to compose our holiday letter. We're certainly not even thinking about it until we've gotten 15 or 20 such missives from friends, family, and various unmentionables during the December/January confluence.

Our effort usually goes like this.
Me: "Are we going to do a letter this year?"
Julie: "I don't know. Do we really want to?"
Liam: "Hey, Guys! Could somebody turn on SpongeBob for me?"

a few weeks later....

Julie: "Well, I wrote our letter today. Tell me what you think."
Me: "Honey this is very nice. I am sure everyone will love all the news about Chet Baker."
Julie: "Everybody LOVES Baker!"
Me: "We might want to work in a mention or two about your husband and your children."
Julie: "Do YOU want to write the letter this year?"

a few weeks later....

Me: "Happy Valentine's Day, Zick! Should we finish off those holiday letters?"
Julie: "Good thing we didn't specify WHICH holiday!"
Phoebe: "Hey Mr. and Mrs. Gutenberg, why don't you just send an e-mail letter out?"

And so we took the opportunity this afternoon to finish sending out the holiday letter. It was an astoundingly beautiful day here today. Almost 60 degrees F, sunny. We did the work outside, sitting at our picnic table in the front yard, squinting at the white paper in the bright sunshine. Writing notes, cramming letters and cards into envelopes. Placing American flag stamps crookedly on each one.

It was a fun way to spend the afternoon. And now we can get to work on the 2006/2007 letter. In fact, we've already started writing it...

Dear Friends:

It's been two weeks since our last holiday letter to you....