Those Christmas Letters
by William E. Hazelgrove
I don't think I ever
get through a season without a couple of those Christmas letters.
You know the ones. They really started coming with the computer
revolution. Very easy to print out fifty letters as opposed to
typing one. Most people send a card with a picture of their children.
We hang them on our French doors. Most of these people we see
maybe once a year but that's all
right because a Yuletide card lets us know that we are still
with each other in spirit. We wish each other the best, a merry
Christmas, a happy new year, health and happiness...then comes
one of those letters.
Sometimes the letter is inserted into a card and sometimes
it is just the letter. The paper is usually stationary and chances
are we receive these letters from people we haven't seen for
years. I always open these letters with a sense of dread
and begin reading. If Andy Warhol granted us fifteen minutes
of fame and the computer age grants us fifteen nanoseconds then
these letters are probably about four to five minutes of enforced
self aggrandizement.
Now, after several years of reading these epistles I have come
to notice several elements that seem endemic to the Christmas
letter. First, it begins as an apologia for not having seen the
many friends and family the sender has addressed the letter too.
This leads to the main swing of the letter which relays in excruciating
detail the busy schedule kept by the
sender. If there are children involved then basketball games
will be mentioned extensively along with Nobel prizes won by
child one or two while child three is already studying in France
under some great artist who has proclaimed a prodigy in the raw.
Then the sender swings over to a spousal summation of which CEO
positions or stock grabs or mergers or some high political office
in the near future is hinted at. Finally, the writer will come
out of the closet and give the real reason for writing--the entire
family--maybe thirty people or so are going to Hawaii or the
Bahamas or Europe and no expense will be spared and aren't we
the luckiest sons of bitches alive!
Now, the reader of these studies in self promotion is left
with a strange taste. Something akin to smoking a stale cigarette.
Since the sender is usually someone the recipient rarely sees
there is no barometer upon which to measure these feats of achievement.
Not unlike watching a television show where everyone is rich
and beautiful except for the viewer. A churlish heat rises from
the neck and suddenly we realize we have been part of a play
we had no desire to act in. We were assigned the role of the
captive audience to middle class bragging. The upper class couldn't
care less and the less sent the better. But the middle class
sender of these little epigrams knows damn well what they are
doing. It is the new car. The new house. The finest school. The
career that sky rockets while we go through our daily routine.
There is the assumption in these letters that the life lead by
the writer is intrinsically fascinating. The
reasons for writing such a letter are undoubtedly varied. Not
enough suckling as a child? Unrequited love? Poor self image?
A grave miscalculation as to human significance in the universe?
Or just plain old conceit?
Finally we reach the conclusion of the letter. Here God is
invoked. The sender is now finished with the recitation of a
life found on the RICH AND FAMOUS and now it is time to invoke
the almighty to show that after all the materialist is a well
rounded individual and does find time for the spiritual favor
of a God who appreciates a man or woman who is successful by
God. Usually this blessing can take a very narrow form
where the sender will say he or she is blessed but then a benevolent
stirring can sometime take place at the end of this polemic in
narcissism and the writer will reach out to us and here is our
payoff for suffering through
the machinations of the jealous heart.
I don't know what most people do with these letters after
having read them. You really cant put them on a French door like
a Christmas Card. I usually drop them into the garbage
with the other solicitations.
