Christmas Letters

For those who know me, you know how much I love receiving Christmas letters. For some reason, people feel warm and fuzzy enough to uncork - and cortical inhibition rules. I've read drastic confessions ("I'd marry my new fiance, but I'm still in love with my dead husband"), venomous critique ("My husband is laying on the ground in pain. The ambulance pulls up, with the exhaust pipe chugging right in his face..."), and sarcastic releases to parenting issues ("So we're off on vacation. Me, Tom, the two kids, and one hot pink arm cast...") Very funny stuff.

One year, I fabricated a Christmas letter. It was so far fetched, in my opinion, that I figured everyone would get the joke. In it, I ran off with a sherpa, translated Kurt Cobain's diaries into Elvish, and began making huge profits selling jewelry made from anti-depressants... The scary thing is? Some people actually believed it. The scarier thing? I personally inspired some straight-and-narrow friends of mine to fabricate their OWN Christmas letter. The only thing is - was theirs was MUCH easier to believe. They wrote about how their life had changed upon winning the lottery... (I'm pretty sure they don't normally buy lottery tickets... and either do I - I'd never remember to check my numbers...) They wrote about taking a Hawaiian vacation - and how their children had never flown on an airplane before... They mused about purchasing a new house...

They read it to me before sending it. I thought it was funny... Until the day I sat in my pastor's office... "Kelly. Did you hear Steve and Judy won the lottery?" I started laughing... I figured that once this got on the church circult, this would be disastrous... so I told him about the Elvish edition of Cobain's diaries, my torrid affair with the sherpa, Prozac Tiarras, and inspiring Steve and Judy's "no harm intended" Christmas letter... We laughed.

A week later, I got my pastor's annual Christmas letter. The return address said the name of my church, but the signature? Kurt Cobain.