How lazy must one be, I once thought, to generate a missive for general distribution instead of writing individual letters to friends and family? The combination of full-time work and small children eventually converted me. At first, I printed the newletters, added a handwritten personal greeting to each, and sent them via USPS; now they are distributed via email. Although my job demands are meager and my children large, my available time seems to have shrunk, and Individual Card Writer is low on my list of Titles I Wish I Deserved, such as Hurdy-Gurdy Musician or Flamenco Dancer.

I didn’t even create a holiday letter in 2020, the least memorable year of my life, and while 2021 is much better, it’s still the second least memorable, at least so far. Perhaps I should say rememberable, because my goal is to forget as much as I can of living for years deprived of human faces and live music, even as that deprivation continues fitfully. I’m going to write the letter this year though, as a small snub to this sluggish, furtive, fearful world, in the if-I-don’t-protest-I-own-it vein.

In addition to their mass-produced tincture, holiday letters earned my disdain for their tendency to exaggerate good news at the expense of real life, much as the curated posts on FB and Instagram do now. As a person who views social media as a roaring river into which I occasionally insert then quickly withdraw a quavering toe, I am sorry to report that I have failed to escape the incessant trumpet blasts of self-praise, though not from the people I love and value most, and not to my personal detriment; as a skeptical elder I am immune from concluding that my own life doesn’t measure up.

So how well did I mange to balance the good and the bad in my own holiday letters? After re-reading a few examples, I grade myself a C-. I did mention negative events in each, but the letters are about 90% positive, and I was unable to resist providing escape hatches, such as countering bad grades with renewed effort, or miserable winters with an escape plan.

Maybe this is grade inflation. My Old Year’s Resolution: write a gritty holiday letter.