“Our daughter still hums as she eats her breakfast cereal.”
That is the most memorable line I’ve ever read in a Christmas letter, which was written by my friend, Meg, six years ago. I’ve hung on to it, for I delight in its poetry and how it resonates with my own son — not that he hums or eats cereal, but I love that he has a similar daydreaming quality.
In our world of social media, the Christmas letter is becoming yet another relic of the past. Why take the time to inform friends and loved ones about your lives when they can see for themselves on Facebook and Instagram? I appreciate those updates throughout the year, whether it’s pictures from the first day of school, a post about a child’s soccer team, or the obituary of a grandparent.
But without sounding hopelessly obsolete, isn’t there still a place for the Christmas letter? For sitting down and writing about the past year’s accomplishments and disappointments, struggles and graces?
A Christmas letter is a piece of poetry. Not that it has to rhyme, but as W.H. Auden wrote, “Poetry makes nothing happen.” Is this a comment about the futility of language, even beauty, in impacting the world around us? Or, as Ross Gay has argued, the point may be that “nothing” can actually happen — a halt on so-called production and output. By conveying insight and emotion into our intimate lives, Christmas letters invite us to slow down. Maybe this pause is needed more than ever.
When someone asks how we are doing, we reply, “Busy.” But a poem is a daydream, a hum, a faraway look. Since taking the time to write and send a Christmas letter is nothing like our face-paced world, it can mean something. Where else am I going to get a glimpse of a child humming over her cereal bowl?
Here is part of what I plan to share this year: My youngest is now six years old. Just recently, she came home with a piece of paper where she’d written that the “best part of me” were her ears because “they help me to hear birds.” Those sweet nothings! Maybe we will remember her words long after that little piece of paper is gone.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of “Little Big Moments,” a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and “Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems.” Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.
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