I penned my first official holiday newsletter in December 1994 and let me tell you it was a sad little thing. I typed it on one of the school’s computers in a huge font with some really bad clip art, and I was so proud of myself for actually writing a page and a half. I printed it out in color on a dot matrix printer and most likely copied it in black and white because color just wasn’t a possibility for us back then. It was just meant to go inside the Christmas cards as a way of updating everyone on what was happening in our family. I’m not sure if I didn’t have the nerve to write another one for years or if I lost a couple, but the next one I can find a copy of wasn’t written until 2001.

I have been very consistent from 2001 on only missing 2004 (a year after losing my mother, I just didn’t have it in me) and 2008 (not sure why). I used preprinted holiday-themed stationery for the letters between 2001 and 2007 which kept the printing costs down. I remember having prints of a photo of the boy printed to include in cards one year, but that was pricey too. In 2006, things changed because it was the first holiday season after I began working in the print shop. One of the perks was knowing what the possibilities were and getting a super cheap price on printing the photos in sheets and in color then cutting them apart to include with the letter.

I found a great little template on Microsoft Publisher that would change the look of this holiday newsletter forever. The little newsletter I affectionately dubbed Beidelman Bits was born in December 2009. Publisher let me insert photos and wrap the text around them and divide the newsletter into sections to cover each of the four of us and what was going on with us. By that time, the kids were teens and I had to resort to finding photos on Facebook in some cases because much of their lives took place away from the home and family life of days gone by.

I discovered really quickly that a picture really was worth a thousand words and began writing the letters by gathering the various photos I would use and writing the words to tell about the photos to fill in around them. I may have gotten lazy with the writing or carried away with the number of photos I would include, but they looked good and many of the relatives that received them each year commented on how much they looked forward to getting them and enjoyed reading them each year.

I always included the ages of the kids and what grade they were in at school. I tried to keep everyone updated on what activities we were all participated in and what family trips we took. I even included news of pets and the occasional photos of the pets.

I tried getting the kids to each write a paragraph or two about their year, but that just didn’t go over well with them. I usually didn’t let any of the family read what I had written until after it was in the mail.

I chose which kid to highlight on the front page by who had graduated that year from either high school or college and made sure to include plenty of photos of course. When they went off to college, I included the school mascot and the kids’ mailing addresses. One year my son got a package out of the blue with a Big Bang Theory TV show t-shirt from a cousin of mine who knew from reading my newsletters that my son was a physics major and would like the show.

I really had trouble scrounging up photos of the kids once they were away at college, and the news was not as plentiful about them and what they were doing. Now that they no longer either one live with us, I wonder if I should even be including the kids in the newsletter anymore. There is really very little to report. We don’t hear from them often and other than working hard and paying off student loans and trying to make ends me while “adulting” there is not much to report.

We still have the pets and our trips to report on, oh and there was that little matter of being unemployed for seven months. Which reminds me, since I no longer have a job at a print shop, the color printing has become cost prohibitive again. Last year we went through two complete sets of cartridges for our inkjet printer to get the newsletters printed in color and that was still considerably cheaper than printing it at any of the local printers because they really overcharge for color printing. I’m not sure how we will handle the printing thing this year. The photos just really don’t have the same effect when printed in grayscale, but the budget doesn’t allow for very many options. We could almost buy a color laser printer for what it would cost to print fifty two-sided color copies at any print shop. The inkjet printer just doesn’t do that great a job, but it is still better than not having color at all.

I am beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t just email the newsletter out, but a number of the older family members would never see it then and I am told that many people have saved all of the newsletters to either reread or compare the photos from year to year.

As I look back on the newsletters which I keep in a binder in sheet protectors I can really see in the early years how my computer skills progressed. In the later years, mostly the only things that progressed were my photo cropping and placing skills as I added more and more photos to each year’s issue.

If you have any suggestions, tips or know of a low-cost printing solution, please let me know. Do you write an annual holiday letter? I wish more people did. Usually, all we get are Christmas cards with a signature or a printed name inside. All that tells me is that the person is most likely still alive to send the cards out and that I haven’t been cut from the list yet. I’d love to get news of what is happening in their lives or even see pictures of the kids, grandkids, and pets. In some cases, I’ve never seen their houses so that would be cool too.

If you thought this was going to be out newsletter posted for the whole world to see, sorry to disappoint you. If you are one of the chosen fifty or so households that regularly receive our newsletters and your address has changed, please shoot me an email or text me your new address, please. I save the ones that are returned and sometimes mail the missed year out the next year so you will have it because I can’t bring myself to throw them away. Invariably I get one or two back each year no matter how carefully I check the address list.

Happy Holidays everyone!