The mental deliberation begins as soon as the Christmas tree goes up: should I send a Christmas card this year? Surely we must have some family photo from some event this year that would be good enough for a card. And look, Shutterfly is having a deal—my mom forwarded it to me this morning.
She was always so good about Christmas cards. Even in years without professional family photos, she’d send one, accompanied by a printed letter with a full recap of each family member’s year. We four children would sit assembly-line style at the table to ready each card for mailing: card, letter, envelope, address label, stamp, seal. On at least one occasion, when my mother was too busy with end-of-semester grading to compose the letter, I stepped in to write it myself, replete with adolescent snark.
But while I know how to send that Christmas card and write that Christmas letter, while I am now celebrating my sixth Christmas running my own household, I still haven’t done it. We don’t have the addresses or even a list of recipients. We’re already spending so much money for the holidays. It’s December 15 now, too late to order a Christmas card and get it in the mail on time, and if we order New Year’s cards, everybody will know we procrastinated. Perhaps next year, I tell myself (knowing, of course, that I will do no such thing).
What is there to say, even? My life is just too boring. All right, sure, maybe there’s one or two pieces of news, but anybody who needs to know does already, and there’s no sense in fluffing one sentence worth of information into a full-page letter. Perhaps the truest (but least informative) statement about my life is that it continues apace. This year looks similar to last year. Last year wasn’t a whole lot different than the year before. Barring some cataclysmic moment of either disaster or joy, I’d wager next year will be similar as well.
I used to think I would lead a thrilling life of adventure and achievement. I was going to be somebody and do something. I suppose I still could, although I’m increasingly less sure about what that would be. So I guess I will just be boring.
In this case, however, the more charitable assessment of affairs is perhaps the more honest one. My life is quiet, certainly, but it is not boring. I do not wake up in dread of every day, nor do I go to sleep with a horrible sense of emptiness each night. In actuality, I rather enjoy my life. It is not particularly exciting by contemporary standards, but it is a good life nevertheless, and I know it is good not because of some grand thing I am accomplishing but the way in which I am endeavoring to live out the ordinary days I am given.
In this small pocket of time and space that I inhabit, I am daily striving to reach out and grasp something infinite. The work I do, the people I love, the home I tend, the meals I make, the books I read, the walks I take, the rhythms of life I establish—all of these are paths that may lead me to the end for which I was created: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. I find the deepest sense of satisfaction in my life when I recognize that even in the quiet, He is speaking to me here.
In writing this letter to close out the year, I have no monthly milestone photos, no before and after, no round-robin summary of each family member’s year (although I’m sure Dobby’s would be quite adorable). My growth is not that of the flower, which explodes into a vibrant blossom before vanishing, but of the tree, branching and budding, dropping what is dead and waiting dormant for new shoots to spring forth. It is slow and silent, but I hope that whatever grows at the end is, in the words of one of my favorite poems, “something shapely, useful, new, delicious.”
And even now, I am grateful for all I have reaped in 2023, and I trust that whatever I have sown will one day bring forth abundance. You will not be getting a Christmas card from me, but I do wish you a merry Christmas nevertheless. We'll see about New Year's.