The Twelve Days of Christmas Letters

'Tis the season, my friends, for Christmas letters.

I absolutely LOVE Christmas letters. Throughout my childhood my parents' friends mailed us family newsletters at Christmas. Even when I didn't know the people who sent us the letters, I was always fascinated by the braggarty stories these other moms would send out about their children and their husbands: Aaron went to a NASA space camp; Katie went to Nationals for rhythm gymnastics; Jason won a robot building contest; the twins got a modeling contract and will be in the March issue of GQ; Maggie received a full soccer scholarship; Gordon Jr. got into MIT; Heidi graduated and married a lawyer; Jim's company won a government bid to build weapons guidance systems so we put in a pool; my design hobby has really taken off and we're moving to Paris... 

It was totally like getting to spy on strangers, a rare pleasure in the days before the interweb. It was also a way for me to compare myself with other kids. I wasn't as overachieving as some. I felt decently ahead of others. And those twins were definitely easy on the eyes - their mom always included a family portrait.

But concerning the really amazing parts of these letters, the parts that really shocked me or filled me with envy, I always wondered whether they were true. I mean, these other families lived hundreds and thousands of miles away. How could we verify that they were really moving to Paris? Maybe the dad was a compulsive gambler and they were really just moving in with the grandparents because they had no money. This conspiracy theorizing was a secondary pleasure of reading Christmas letters.

With this memory in mind, I have invented a little project, a game of sorts. I'm going to write twelve Christmas letters, filled with truth and lies. You're going to tell me what's true in them. The game starts tomorrow.