This was meant to be the Christmas newsletter but the printer decided that what I really wanted was instructions for the breast pump. We got there eventually.
I always keep the Christmas letter to one side of A4. This year it’s one side of A5: our very big news meant that there wasn’t much space in the last two quarters for much else. Some people get very snobby about them, but I think they’re as good a way as any as keeping loved ones updated.
I think maybe you’re all meant to know each other’s news already? It doesn’t work that way in my immediate family. My father, who spent most of his evenings on the phone to various friends and relations, was a distinct outlier; the rest of us are dreadful at it. Then there’s the point that a typed letter looks superficial and impersonal. Yes, but definitely better than nothing. Certainly last year, when I was pregnant, not telling anyone about it quite yet, and suffering first trimester exhaustion the like of which I’d never imagined, I was in no mood to write out fifty times by hand that my father had died and that I’d had a bout of COVID that it had taken me two months to get over.
Or are you meant to assume that people don’t care about your news, on the grounds that you don’t care about theirs? But I do care. I always enjoy reading other people’s letters, regardless of whether I was present at every event they report on or haven’t seen them for years.
Anyway, friends who do them, keep writing them; I’ll keep reading them; and I’ll get mine sent out as soon as I have some time to write some cards. Which might be this month. You never know.
Kathleen Jowitt 