Every year I write the annual Christmas Letter, and send it folded and stuffed into cards that alternate from comedic to traditional, from religious to secular, depending both upon the recipient and my mood right after the prior year’s Christmas, when I picked through the crumbs and leavings that are the post-Christmas 90% off sales.

I dread the composition of it, as I do any and every assigned bit of writing. But it is my thing, my family holiday duty and generally – as with all my writing – once I get into it, I’m into it.

In preparation for “getting into it” for this year, I spent some time this week re-reading the letters from years past. They are – need I say it? – invariably witty, filled with tidbits that make my heart ache for times when the kids were younger, at the same time forcing me to remember how trying three young children can be.

Like from 1996, when my youngest (now 12 and as tall as his father) was just over a year old. “His favorite pastime is closing the dryer door after each cold, wet lump of laundry I deposit in it. To get through each load takes about twenty minutes and just as many utterances of ‘Thank you - what a good helper!’”

Almost every year includes a soccer update about my eldest, now off the field permanently due to a bad knee. She’s in college now and home just last night for her first slumber back in her attic bedroom, under the eaves of a house decorated without her. The ornaments that bear her name, in shapes that celebrate her interests through the passing years, were set aside on the piano until she could hang them on the tree herself.

And just last year, about my second daughter - a middle child like me - the following piece of news about her startling new hobby: “She’s working on a fantasy novel featuring ‘girls with magical powers…and stuff…and suspense…and random stuff like that.’ That’s her elevator pitch…” She has since completed a 367 page first draft, the seminal novel in a series, a feat her mother never accomplished until she was literally twice the girl’s age.

I’ve never skipped a year for The Christmas Letter. Excepting, of course, the year we sold our house and moved in the single month before Christmas, when I was so frenzied and frayed that I sent a Mad-Lib version. Remember Mad-Libs? A ______ (adj.) game that is sure to _____ (verb) the whole _____ (noun)?

My seventy-something aunt in Arizona actually filled hers out and mailed it back to me.

So how about you? Up to composing a brief summary of your year? How about a one line Mad-Lib we can all have fun with? I’ll start:

2007: After completing her _______ (number) books for the year, Regina ________ (verb, past tense) her _________ (adj.) literary agent, a person of ________ (adj.) ________ (noun) and _______ (noun), whereupon
said person of _________ (adj.) ________ (noun) said to her, “Regina, you are the ________ (superlative adj.) ________ (noun) I’ve ever had the pleasure of _________ (verb, ending in ‘ing’) and I’m _________ (adj.) to let you know you’ve just _________ (verb, past tense) the __________ !(noun)

Fill mine in and/or offer up your own!