Michelle’s Favorite Things: Christmas Letters

Blogger: Michelle Ule

Location: Santa Rosa, CA, where it is not snowing

Owing to too many family tragedies, Christmas is not the most wonderful time of my year. Some years it has been an emotional gauntlet to get through the season. But every year, one aspect of the holidays has brought me great joy. I don’t care what Dear Abby says, I love the Christmas letters and photos tucked into Christmas cards.

As a naval officer, my husband has led our family all over the world, and we have celebrated Christmas in a variety of ways. We had snow in Connecticut and Washington; melting chocolate Advent calendars in Hawaii; and orange blossoms in Florida. We even spent one dismal Christmas Eve with a group of drunken, kimona-clad Japanese businessmen at the Queenstown, New Zealand Hard Rock cafe.

But through it all, the letters have come, and I’ve embraced them. With so many friends spread all over the world, it has been pure delight to get their stories each year: pictures of adorable children who grew up with mine, now grown into accomplished adults. I’ve cried and laughed, rejoiced and been sobered as I’ve read these letters. And I’ve kept several years’ worth, with photos going back to 1977.

This year I received a Christmas card from a long-lost cousin. Long-lost is the operative description; in her card she told of her return to Christ, the positive changes in her life, and her hope to connect with me once more.  I nearly dropped the card I was so astonished and joyful.

In the years before Facebook and the Internet, these letter often were the only connection I had with people in whose pockets I had lived while at far-flung duty stations. Every year I open one envelope with anticipation. Hank always begins with one-sentence positive descriptions of his eight home-schooled children. He spends a paragraph on his terrific wife and finishes the second half of his single-spaced letter glorifying his God. Encouraged as always, I admired the photo this year, read the letter, and went to my computer to send an e-mail of thanks.  I attached our Christmas letter, for while the family will get our card and letter in the mail, Hank lives in Baghdad this year.

Christmas letters are the connections to people I’ve loved in the past, the present, and this year–into the future. Last night we saw an ultrasound photo of a grandchild we’ll meet in July 2011.

It’s fitting at this time of year to remember that God wrote a love story to each of us, and we revisit that story every Christmas. Jesus’ birth is the reason for the celebration–of Christmas, of families, of story.

Happy New Year, 2011.