NIA Dec29 col Complete DD
A Commentary by Doug Draper
Goodbye to the good, bad and ugly of 2011.
A typical template for a holiday family newsletter for people that can't use their own imagination.
It has been a year of blood-letting wars and revolutions overseas, destructive flood, fire and wind storms, a world economy teetering on the brink and continued high unemployment rates here at home.
Whether 2011 has been a good year or bad one, or something in between depends on your perspective.
If you lost your job or lost a loved one to illness or a fatal accident, or if some other tragedy of that magnitude shook you on the home front, then this year may be one you won’t look back on very fondly. Then again, if you were fortunate to keep your job and avoid any other calamities, then it may be a different story.
One of the things I find most interesting in this regard are those family newsletters some people insist on sending around in place of a mere card or, dare I dream, an actual visit or phone call during the holiday season. You know the kind of newsletters I’m talking about, don’t you? They’re the ones written like form letters with no references to you or your family other than your name keyed in after the word “Dear …”
Now in fairness, there is the odd family newsletter that reads as if it’s offering an honest account of the family’s year, balancing good moments with some that weren’t so good. It’s a form letter, but it seems there’s still an attempt to be a little real with people on the other side of the message.
Then there’s the bulk of these newsletters and the ones that annoy me the most – the ones that read like the whole family is racing down a road of everlasting happiness on steroids.
They are the newsletters that often come with pictures of children you haven’t seen since their baptism or first birthday, and with glowing accounts of the scholastic achievements of these children along with such lines as ‘Jack and Jill’s science projects were so ingenious, their teachers were lobbying to have them displayed in glass cases in the lobby of the school board headquarters’.
They are the newsletters that go on to high five the promotions and bonuses bestowed upon working members of the family during the year, and gush over all the vacations the family took to exotic places.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting there reading this thing and thinking that if I’m only finding out now about a ‘trip-of-a-life’ these people took to Venice or Rio sometime last April, then what kind of a relationship do we have in the first place. Hardly a very close one. So what’s the point of this newsletter.
I don’t know about you, but these hyper-happy family newsletters usually show up in my mail box about the same time we’re dealing with some very real, not always so happy issues in my family. At that point, what are you supposed to do with these newsletters, so often peppered with phrases like; “we are happy to report …”, “We celebrated another …,” and “We feel so blessed,” other than toss them in the trash.
What I’ve been tempted to do is compose what I might describe as a ‘family newsletter from hell’ and send it to the people that circulate these silly notes. I’m making this up just as I think some of the hyper-happy newsletter writers are either making it up or are in a complete state of denial, but my letter would start by saying something like; ‘Hope you are doing well. We’re sorry to report that things have gone fairly crappy for the Draper family over the past year. … The year ended with our son Ruddy – you remember Ruddy, don’t you? He’s our eldest and the one we’ve had the worst time trying to keep from being expelled from remedial school. Well just before Christmas, he was caught lighting the hay on fire at a nativity scene at church down the road. He’s spending the holiday season in a detention centre but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. … Let’s go back to the beginning of the year when at the same time we were declaring personal bankruptcy, my wife Gertrude had her job working at a factory that recycles belly button lint outsourced to Mongolia. …’
Enough of that. Hopefully, you get the idea and I’m willing to bet that if we all sent family newsletters back to those people who sent their happy notes to us from Mickey Mouse land, we’d never hear from them again. Never!
And there’s a hopeful thought for the rest of us in this New Year folks. Let’s get more connected with the challenging realities so many of us are facing out there and support one another that way. No more hyper-happy holiday newsletters, please!
(Feel free to share your thoughts below if you dare to so so using your real name.)
Niagara At Large 