The dreaded Christmas newsletter

I am not alone in loathing the newsletters people think others are desperately awaiting every Christmas.  Read a hilarious piece by Oliver Pritchett from The London Telegraph, obviously a kindred spirit. 

"December is the month when we indulge in the great winter sport of mocking the holiday newsletter, that annual outpouring of boasts, banality and bathos," writes Pritchett.  "These dispatches, often from distant relations or long-dropped friends, are the source of great mirth," he notes.  Indeed they are. 

Every year we receive one such ghastly gem from a couple who come and go in our lives and who we see maybe once every couple of years.  Filled with minutiae of every conceivable and boring variety, neither B nor I have ever been mentioned -- in spite of the fact that some years they have visited and we have dined out.  One year they even spent a weekend with us at The Gatineau Fish & Game Club; didn't rate a line. 

Here are a few exerpts from this year's tome............hold on fast your festive hats..............

"In late January, M took me to Stratford-Upon-Avon to see 'Written on the Heart', a play commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company to mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible in 1611, of which one of the editors, appointed by King James I, was my great uncle four centuries removed, Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626)."

Imagine!

Then it was on to Calgary...."Drove to Brooks (later infamous for a meat plant E-coli outbreak) for M to speak in a legion hall, then to Drumheller overnight with K and P on the edge of a coulee where our first-ever mountain bluebird sat dazzlingly outside our window and deer grazed at dawn."

Wow!  (Note:  this is when we saw them for dinner, but aren't mentioned.  Guess a dirty gastro-intestinal disease is more noteworthy.)

"Then we visited a house Halle Berry had for sale on Lake Molson in the Laurentians.  Later M and I drove to Ottawa and saw the Van Gogh "Up Close" show at the National Gallery.  Wonderful!"

What a topper!

"We welcomed former neighbor (sic), osteopath AM and her sons J (7) and M (5) from Strasbourg for a couple of weeks so they could practise English (and help hunt Japanese rose beetles infesting our beautiful roses)."

The nerve!

"We had nights up north on Lake Muskoka on Lake of Bays and marvelled at a friend's 'Animals in Art' collection at the Dufferin County Museum on our way down....I was thrilled to be (have been, sic) able to bring pumpkin pudding to niece A's condo and listen as she recovered from her flight from Kathmandu and her climb to Everest base camp."

Hard to beat!

"Sad news that my cousin, MB, had been in intensive care in Scarborough for a month after reacting badly to experimental chemotherapy.  Then M had surgery on his forehead to remove an apparently benign but ugly third-growth keratoacanthoma.  The biopsy later showed squamous carcinoma cells."

Lovely. 

"While we were away, Super Storm Sandy caused a cedar tree next door to collapse into our swimming pool and carry some soil with it."

How tragic!  Here's the finale................

"A phrase comes to mind as I (a)waken (sic) -- "Sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing", John Keats.  Oh, read the first 33 lines!"

Breathtaking!

You. Could. Not. Make. This. Up.  And the woman is serious!!!  One year I told B I intended to send one back:

"This Spring, when the snow cleared, I picked up 210 dog droppings from the back deck," it would have read.  "Then it was on to the laundry room, where more sh-t awaited dealing with.  In January I had a cold, got a little tipsy one long and boring night in February and was constipated by April.  Had a hysterectomy in May and a bladder infection ensued................"

B overuled it.     

(Note:  B has known this couple since way "before moi".  Obviously.  I try to be tolerant, but fail.  The author has my blog address, but I doubt reads it.  If she does, perhaps we will be spared the next.  Nevertheless, I am grateful for the blog material it has supplied.  As Pritchett concludes:

"They give us a few moments of harmless fun and December would be greyer without them.")