The home-grown horror known as The Christmas Letter can be quite funny. Sometimes funny/ha-ha but mostly funny/weird.
In my eternal desire to help bring about the end of civilization, I humbly offer the following fourteen pointers.
1) Screw being PC. . .
To be politically correct, it should be called the 'Seasons Greetings' letter, but to hell with that. Go ahead and use some fucking religiosity shit.
2) Details, Specifics, Minutiae. . .
Start jotting down notes early in the year to accumulate lots of useless information for your massive missive. The idea is to include so many incidents that even your own relatives will be surprised you remembered all that crap.
3) Be boring. . .
Whether you write a long letter or an incredibly long letter, make certain your message is not very merry by using plenty of platitudes: “What a season this has been!” Or “Whew, can you believe that another year has flown by?!” Your goal is to be irrefutably dull. If Uncle Milt falls asleep while reading it, then you know you’ve done a good job.
4) TMI. . .
Always provide too much information, especially about family diseases, illnesses, and doctor’s visits. Go into detail about that oddly-colored discharge you had for several weeks just before summer.
5) Name names. . .
Make references to people no one else knows. “Spent a delightful four-day weekend with Linda and George at their new place.” That’s a good start but go ahead and pile on some extraneous details: “Spent a delightful four-day weekend with Linda and George and their kids, Jamie, Tyler, and little Benny, plus all their pets.” You get extra points for naming the pets, both real and imagined, so work in a mention of “Benny’s beloved invisible ferret, Sleepy-Woo Goldentail Dancer.”
6) Scorn. . .
Add put-downs to everything: “Apparently, their son Tyler takes his raggedy teddy bear with him everywhere. Sure, it’s getting embarrassing now that he’s sixteen, but the parents insist that the kid’s counseling is coming along nicely.”
7) Tease. . .
Mention events without providing any context or follow-up. “We burned out the neighbors who always held the loud parties, but who knew that the cops and the D.A. could be so pesky about these things?!”
8) Scores ‘n’ stats. . .
If anyone in the family takes part in any sport, regale us with their triumphs. “Nate was ninety-third best in his badminton league this year and Joanne got an Honorable Participant certificate at the quilting bee.” Toot your own horn: “Achieved a new personal best of 148 at Bowl-a-Drome Lanes last March!” Provide all the details: “Didn’t think I’d break 130 in that game but then I made a 4-10 split to pick up the spare heading to the last frame, when all of a sudden the pizza we ordered arrived and then...”
9) Critters. . .
Animals are cute, so write about them: “The new pet turtles are called Mitch and McConnell but unlike the conservative senator from Kentucky, they aren’t venomous and treasonous.” Write about every single precious thing your pets did in the past year, including results of vet visits. “Paddycake is getting around much better now that the bullet wounds have healed. Currently, we’re working on curing her habit of peeing on the furniture. The pet psychiatrist says to demonstrate the proper technique by getting down on all fours and going on the newspapers in the corner and at first I felt embarrassed about it but it turns out to be SO liberating...!” Be certain to include all the stories of your doggies and kitties and fishies and hamsters and snakes because everybody loves pets! Mainly because they taste good. Especially fried.
10) Double Entendres. . .
The truly creative writers of Xmas letters are able to insert words and phrases that are rousing and stimulating in unintended ways: “Dottie’s ‘cousin’ Sharon is a good cook and when she came to the party she laid out a wonderful spread.”
11) Sentences that go on almost forever are just one more way of letting your readers know you take things very seriously and that you truly believe these matters are extremely exceptionally important for some reason. . .
Remember KICS (keep it complicated, stupid). Avoid something like: “Ryan got married; beautiful ceremony; good eats afterwards.” Amateurish! A professional Christmas Letter writer will create a much more serpentine reading experience: “After a decade of wishing and hoping and praying from his parents and other family members, Ryan finally tied the knot and nearly everybody said that his partner is quite handsome and really almost beautiful now that the hormone injections are starting to take effect. The ceremony, which was held on the marina club patio at sunset with everyone wearing leis and love beads while the 13-piece wind orchestra played instrumental versions of Celine Dion tunes, was simply beautiful, and some folks tell me that the luau afterwards set some sort of record for lawsuits against a caterer. Ginny and I, having much stronger intestinal fortitude, came out unscathed. Or perhaps it was because we avoided the shellfish.”
12) Borrow and Steal. . .
Take phrases from other people’s letters. It’s like re-gifting a fruitcake. Here are a few:
“Again we celebrate our Lord sending His Son Jebus to us.”
“The recent year has been as filled as many of our years usually are.”
“We enjoyed our beautiful autumn, which is our favorite season because by then most of the mosquitoes have died.”
13) Good Enough is Gud Enuff. . .
Don’t yew bother about niceties like spelling punctuation run-on sentences words that are high-faw-lutin’ grammeriacalizatory stuff.
14) Yummy Yummy. . .
Pass along food tips, especially the perilous ones: “In July the parents of the Little League teams got together for a potluck and every dish had bacon. All the recipes from that event were published by the League newsletter, Rough Diamond, in an issue sponsored by a local cardiologist. Let me know if you want one; we still have plenty of photocopies that Dottie made, may she rest in peace.”
Excerpted from Your Panties are Broadcasting on my Frequency.