The Holiday Newsletter...

Where did November go? Why didn't I post? I don't exactly know...

Same thing happened to 2010 (and, to be honest, pretty much every decade since 1989).

Which leads me to today's hot topic: the holiday newsletter.

This is the time of year when magazines, bloggers, sitcoms and even comic strips are criticizing the holiday newsletters that some people send in their Christmas cards.

I, for one, am not going to take it anymore. I'm going to shout it out into the blogosphere: I LOVE HOLIDAY NEWSLETTERS!

And, yes, I write them, too.

I love catching up with my busy friends' lives via their holiday letters. I adore hearing about the great things happening in their families, and I don't consider it "braggy" for someone to share happy news, because I am happy FOR THEM. (Your kid made the honour roll? AWESOME! You finally took that tropical vacation? Hooray! More people should do that, because it's good for your health, and good for relationships, and actually makes the world economy go round...)

It means so much more to me to read a letter than to just open a card with a generic signature, because it reconnects me with the people who sent it.

Yes, it would be better to spend face to face time with people. Yes, the telephone is always an option. But timezones and schedules are often hard to sync, and even when calls happen, it's impossible to say everything.

So I'll probably be sending my own newsletter again, complete as always with pics of the dog and cat in funny Santa hats, because I don't have any kids to include. Some of the people I send it to might think it's hokey, or braggy when I say I published two books this year, but I hope that the people who care about me will delight in my good fortune as I delight in theirs.