I don't think I ever get through a season without a couple of those Christmas letters. You know the ones. They really started coming with the computer revolution. Very easy to print out fifty letters as opposed to typing one.
Most people send a card with a picture of their children.
We hang them on our French doors. Sometimes the letter is inserted into a card and sometimes it is just the letter. The paper is usually stationary and chances are we receive these letters from people we haven't seen for years. I always open these letters with a sense of dread and begin reading. Now, after several years of reading these epistles I have come to notice several elements that seem endemic to the Christmas letter.