Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

So you’ve had your fill of all things turkey, had enough of the in laws and spending four days at home with the kids. You’ve suffered through black Friday and come face to face with the constant playing of Christmas music on your favorite radio station so I’m sure you are starting to get into the holiday spirit. As I am apt to do this time of year, I’ve got the urge to provide my small community service message on the do’s and don’ts of a successful Christmas letter.

1. Remember folks it’s about presentation. Clip art and colored paper are great, as well as photos if you can manage to do it, but remember that ink color choice is just as important. Red ink on red paper doesn’t make for an easy reading experience.

2. We want to hear about your family….YOUR family..not your neighbors, not your nieces and nephews and not anyone you work with. Just as important to remember, pets are not children, so don’t act like they are…that just makes those of us with children crazy.

3. We all know your kids are rocket scientists and you think they are really cute, so spare some of the mushy stuff and tell us a couple of funny anecdotes or give us a hint of what they like to make shopping for them a little easier.

4. If you’ve made a major purchase like a car or a home those things are ok to include in your letter. If your major purchase was a foot massager, or you’ve decided to have your tubes tied we probably don’t want to know.

5. Talking about your vacation is a nice idea as long as your vacation lasted longer than three days and consisted of actually doing something other than sitting at home on the couch and eating cheetos.

6. Be sure to include your latest contact information so if we get the urge to invite you over for burgers we can call or email you. This information is also helpful when your ex calls our house looking for you.

7. Remember folks it’s a letter…not a novel…Try to keep it down to a couple pages…any more than two and the egg nog starts to take its toll on my attention span.

8. Never include information that you wouldn’t want someone’s grandma to read, because we hang them up and if they are really good share them with people who don’t know you. We wouldn’t want you to be embarrassed and more importantly…we don’t want to be embarrassed by people we see all the time because of the company we keep.

9. Tell us about your job, but try to keep stories about things “you had to be there to understand” to a minimum as it will just confuse me.

10. Getting a business to sponsor your letter is a great idea! Especially if it’s Kinko’s or the postal service which makes mailing them out cheaper.

11. When including information on family members…Ages and grades of children are nice to have, your brothers arrest record not so much.

12. And finally, It’s a Christmas letter….If you are lazy and send it out after New Year’s then call it the “After New Year’s letter”..if it’s July…don’t bother…we know your lazy and if we were that interested in what you were up to we would have called you by now.

See you next week…remember, we’re all in this together.