Some Christmas letters annoying like fruitcakes
Pat Laster

For several years, Christmas letters have garnered as bad a rap as fruitcake, sentiments I never shared since I enjoy hearing from friends and family, and because I like fruitcake. (Have you tried Archway's Fruitcake Cookies? Yummy.)

Up until last year, I couldn't appreciate all the negative and satirical press about letters. Now I can.

I received three such letters.

Letter number one, tucked inside the first card of the season- a Caspari (NY, Zurich) detail from George Hallowell's "Trees in Winter," whose purchase benefited the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston- came Dec. 1. You'll see later why I went into such detail about the card.

It was from a Texas woman I'd never met except by telephone and video tape when she presented her half of a joint presentation we agreed to give at a regional meeting of haiku poets in Hot Springs.

I shouldn't have been surprised at the letter, for when she sent me her vita for our 30-minute time slot, it contained six pages.

The Christmas missive, a 102-line, single-spaced, backand front of a standard sheet of paper, turned out to be serious overkill. The first 21 lines touted her new knitting book and begged for our help in publicizing it. The next 33 lines were divided into five parag raphs beginning this way: "I have continued to be active in the knitting world…;" "I continue my grateful payback to 'science fairs'…;" and "I have accepted a position on the board of 'noMSG'…"

On the back page, the "I" rut cut deeper. "I continue my involvement in the world of haiku," she wrote, giving the titles of two papers she'd presented during the year.

The next 40 lines summarized her family activities, one of which was that their Christmas tree- all in Star Wars, Star Trek and NASA ornaments- would be featured in the Dallas Morning News.

She reviewed a husband-andwife trip to Seattle, courtesy of a drug company, and her daughter's 11th grade year, including the daily schedule and PSAT scores: 780 verbal, 710 math.

The closing paragraph asked us again to plug her publication. A handwritten note closed with "Rejoice with me in the birth of my book." I ran across her book somewhere, but ignored it.

A second letter began a third of the way down a page topped with a Christmas-tree scene, and came from a friend who had moved to Alabama 20 years ago. When her father died, I'd sent a card to her parents' home.

Her 20-line reply brought us up to date on her mother's dementia, their three children/ grandchildren and themselves- she'd had breast cancer surgery immediately after her father's death. I was glad to hear from her.

The third letter, nine lines long, was from my 50-year-old sister, Barb, who with husband Rob had fostered many children before adopting three. There were two sentences about the David and Kwabena; one about the grown daughter Jessica; one about husband Rob and one about her church job.

The second paragraph mentioned our father's death and the adoption of their granddaughter by the same friends who had adopted their grandson.

A wish to us for a "blessed and joyful holiday season" ended the letter.

If all Christmas letters read like Barb's, no one could fault the practice. Curmudgeons could then disparage the ubiquitous canned Christmas music- and fruitcake.