The Christmas Letters

When my eldest was a year old, I began writing an annual Christmas Eve letter. They were tucked away to be delivered, one per year, from the time they left home. They've left home. Here's the story.

For the last ten years, every Christmas Eve I have sat down and written for my children what the family has come to call the “Christmas Letters.” The Christmas Letters are ridiculously long, shamelessly sentimental letters that my children will open on future Christmas Eves, one per year, starting the year they leave home. I will continue to write these letters long after they’ve moved out, until I’m either senile or buried. Which means that my children will open a letter from their father on Christmas Eve for about twenty years after I’m gone.

I protect them like a nervous squirrel. Right now the letters are stored on CDs and in every third directory on my computer so that I don’t lose them. They are also printed out in hard copies, organized by year, collated into a binder, protected by see-through plastic slip covers. I store the binder in the same fire-proof safe that holds our wills and our Do Not Resuscitate documentation.

The safe is locked with a key. There are actually two keys…