Letter Campaign

Christmas letters are supposed to be cheery. They seem to be a brief recap of the year with a little fun thrown in so everyone goes home happy. I have had a hard time finding that tone this year. There are so many good things that I want to write about and a number of difficult things I have to write about. Distilling 2006 into a brief, positive summary is a difficult task.

As I have tried to write the letter, I have come up with a number of quotes that summarize our year in some way. I cannot use any of the quotes below because they don't capture the essence of this year. Well that, and they are downers. I read them to my Mom and she was aghast that I would even consider any of these quotes for the Christmas letter. Don't worry Mom, I will come up with something that is more palatable.

A sampling of my upbeat quotes:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, … it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us …” –Charles Dickens

“April is the cruelest month.” –T. S. Eliot (Robert's funeral was in April and I am still surprised at how draining that was for me even though I thought I had no emotion left to be drained of then.)

“One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed.” –T. S. Eliot

Oh, yeah, have a super, grand, merry Christmas, too!