One of my favorite things to do this time of year is my
Holiday letter. I love it, too, when people email me after receiving the letter
to tell me how much they enjoy my humor. I think it’s great to go to an
extended family event and be complimented on my humble little letter. It’s so
fantastic. I’ve even had people ask me if they could be on my Christmas card
list! But, I suppose I must come forward and tell you that I can’t really take
sole credit. I mean I do have a small staff of tiny men and women working for
me. Sure, I have the ideas, but they are the ones who put it altogether. It
used to be that I would creep into houses via chimney or, even better, mail
slot, but that’s when I was a lot slimmer and younger and without so much
facial hair. Anyway now I am just too darn busy to be hand delivering mail. And
the demand is so much greater. Now I have my little friends, the elves do it. It used to be that my letters only traveled a
short distance, but now I’m expected to get these things out and about all over
the globe. Germany? Africa? Missouri? How am I supposed to get it all done and
be back in time for Christmas morning?! I mean sure, I have a few feral
reindeer in my neighborhood who could probably be bribed into pulling me around,
but reindeer just don’t have the same work ethic that they used to. They’d
probably charge me an inordinate amount of money, have me put it in Dasher’s
paypal account and then ditch me anyway. Now that marijuana’s legal in Washington I’d
be hard pressed to find a couple of reindeer who weren’t clad in tie-dye
ponchos, sitting on the couch making paper snowflakes and eating Cheetos,
anyway.
Each year I look forward to writing the letter and each year
parts of the letter wind up on the cutting room floor. I wish I did these letters
on a typewriter because I’d love the drama of pulling out a piece of freshly
typed Allen history, crumbling it into a ball and watching it pile up. That
would be more satisfying than this backspace, delete thing I have going on.
Where’s the pleasure in that?
This year, I found it especially difficult to write the letter.
To me, the letter is all about entertainment. Oh and I suppose it’s necessary
to include some information about the family. I want to keep people interested
and I want to avoid the possibility that someone might just skim the letter.
Give them one or two boring lines and the next thing you know they are skipping
whole paragraphs just to get to the end. This year, I actually did five drafts before I
finally came up with a winner. I made the mistake of not immediately printing
155 copies and now I am rethinking the letter again. In fact I was originally
going to post all of the false starts here in this blog, but now that I am
re-reading them, I might just weave them in to the letter. Don’t tell Mike or
the kids I’m thinking of another re-write. That might be all the ammunition
they need to take my laptop away and lock it up until next year.
I complained on Facebook about this whole process and people
started advising me. People told me not to sweat it. There were suggestions to let my kids do it. They
told me this whole thing was no big deal. I was totally offended. Clearly these
people didn’t recognize my writing prowess from years past. These are probably
the people who set the letter aside to read
later (sarcastic air quotes*) and never do. Or, more likely, they were
Facebook novices and didn’t realize the whole point of Facebook was to complain
and ask for advice and then get indignant when people actually tried to help
you.
Every year as I am beginning this process I re-read the
letters from years past. My favorite might be from 2006 when we first moved
here and I was on the hunt for decent pizza. Pizza jokes go a long way my
friends, a long way. As do toilet training jokes (see 2005), and the inevitable
rain jokes-hey it is the Pacific Northwest.
I’m not sure how this year’s letter will compare to the letters
of years past. I hope people enjoy it, even if it’s not my best. I will
probably leave it out for the elves to put some finishing touches on it tonight.
And if it still isn’t up to par by morning the reindeer can always make paper
snowflakes out of it.
*Yes, I
realize I could have used real quotation marks here, but I really wanted you to
be clear that sarcastic air quotes were indeed necessary
