The Greatest Writing Opportunity of the Year is Here!
By: Marijke Mccandless
Tags: Writing, Writing Tips, Family, Letters, Holidays

The Greatest Writing Opportunity of the Year is Here!

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

Writers take heed. The time is upon us. After a busy year of great excuses as to why we haven’t been writing much, at last, the mother lode writing opportunity (including a captive audience) presents itself — clear, unpretentious, a ghost of past, present and future reaching out a scrawny finger, beckoning: Come. It’s time.

Perhaps, you are squirming in your seat right now because you know what is being requested. And, deep down in your soul, despite the Scrooge-like withholding of writing this year — you know you are up for the task: the thematic weaving of this year’s good and bad, the drawing from events of the past year to arrive at the present, the happy messages of goodwill for the future — in other words: the annual holiday letter.

Yes. That’s right the dreaded annual holiday letter, my writing friends, is in fact an optimum opportunity to practice your writing skills.

History of the annual holiday letter

Perhaps you, like me, are curious how this tradition came about. Smithsonian Magazine did a piece on the history of our love-hate relationship with the annual holiday letter a couple years ago. Did you know this letter-writing practice started in the late 1940s and then took off in the 50s as people moved out of their home towns? It got a further boost in the 60s with the advent of photocopiers and the Christmas stamp. I learned too that it is an “Americanish” tradition, popular because it is egalitarian and secular.

The most amazing fact, though, is that the annual holiday letter survived our modern-day propensity to prefer communications over the internet. Although, we do love our juicy social media quips, Smithsonian reports, we also still appreciate the novelty of receiving “a printed letter arriving in the mail — the stamp cost half a dollar!! sent from an actual place!! complete sentences!! touched by an actual person!! a real signature!!!”

Our love-hate relationship with holiday letters

The hate part of the love-hate relationship seems to be tied to the quality of the writing. The Atlantic Monthly reported (in the 50s at least) that annual holiday letters were replete with too many exclamations!!! We, writers, know what a no-no that is. There is also the tendency for the annual letter to become a “brag rag,” as Ann Landers apparently put it. The Emily Post Ettiquette advice column reports that the 47% of people who don’t like annual holiday letters likely feel that way because of the inclination to obnoxiously boast, and then offers real examples on how to avoid doing that, such as “Scott was accepted at LSU. Not… Scott scored 1600 on his SATs.”

How to write a better annual holiday letter

Which brings me to you writers. We have the opportunity to do better — to write well. While Emily Post might offer you advice on how not to brag, I’d like to offer you something more. What if, this writing-to-a-captive audience was an amazing opportunity for us writers to hone our skills? I like to think of it as crafting a one-page “Great American Holiday Letter.”

So what are the qualities you might bring to your annual letter writing challenge?

1. Free-write to a prompt to get started

One way to get started is to sit down and free-write to a prompt, such as this: “This was a year of . . .”

Free-writing means you set a timer and just write until the timer goes off without filtering, editing or controlling what you are writing. It can be very helpful to prime the writing pump. What wants to come out when you don’t think too hard?

2. Come up with a theme for the year

Writing an annual letter is also a good opportunity, though, to quietly reflect on the year as a whole and to come up with a theme. Coming up with a theme adds the element of story-crafting to a letter and can allow you to synthesize disparate events by weaving your theme throughout the letter. Having a theme also serves as a great opening line. Here, for example, is the opening line from my letter last year:

“2019 took us on a journey down the great River of Impermanence, where we sampled many flavors of joy and sorry. It’s so hard to accept that life includes loss, that love includes grief.” (This was a year when a parent died and kids got engaged.)

3. Share lessons learned

A holiday letter is a good forum to communicate what you have discovered this year, including the lessons you have learned and what you wish for others. Often the lessons are tied to the theme.

4. End on a positive note, but do share the hard stuff

A holiday letter is traditionally an upbeat positive piece of writing, but if you want to connect more deeply with your family and friends include the tougher challenges you have navigated this year too — that means the emotions, though, not the clinical details of a surgery. This will make the letter more authentic. It’s the hard stuff that makes us grow and it’s overcoming challenges that is ultimately inspiring to others.

5. Practice showing not telling

Show, rather than tell, your family and friends what your life has been like by including little one or two sentence scenes from the year, told in active instead of passive voice: “we watched mesmerized as the “Free Solo” team accepted an Oscar…”

6. Practice finding your unique voice

Practice finding your voice. Is your letter snarky, self-deprecating, or philosophical? A holiday letter is a great opportunity to try out different voices, or to discover that your natural voice is.

7. Practice editing

A holiday letter is best if it is one-page long, though single-spaced and narrow margins are okay. Typically, this means you will need to write a first draft and then cut it way back. Great writing practice.

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Writing friends, it’s time. As we end one year — especially this year — and begin another, go forth and cast your writing spells. We could all use some good writing juju.

Throw off the chains holding you back. See that your future writing self is in fact generous with words, and loves to use them to reach out and connect — let’s lift up and inspire the Tiny Tim’s among us.

I’ll leave you with the opening line of my letter this year:

2020: “‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.’ Now I know (perhaps we all know) firsthand, what Charles Dickens was expressing…”