Christmas is the busy season for pastors. As a result of the busy nature of my career, I developed several habits. Some of those habits have been meaningful and helpful for me. For example, I have learned to make adjustments to my personal schedule, including sleep with minimal disruption. That makes travel comparably easier for me than for some. Although I am generally a morning person, I thrived with midnight Christmas Eve services. For much of my career those late nights were followed by early mornings the next day. I rose to the excitement of children or the task of baking bread without feeling overly tired. I also learned to prioritize tasks. Because there are always interruptions and unforeseen crises in the work of a pastor, I learned that if the need for an extra hospital call or a longer than expected conversation with a parishioner interrupted my work, there would be some other tasks that could be shed. I often responded by adding more hours to the work day, but I also learned that doing so can make one less efficient and not more. I learned to juggle many different tasks. For most of my career I kept a cluttered desk because I was simultaneously working on multiple projects. I am now, however, a multitasker. I work best when I am focused on a single task. So rather than try to do two things at the same time, I learned to switch from one focus to the next. To this day I frequently have multiple books that I am reading in the same time period. I can switch from one to the other without forgetting where I was in either.

However, I also developed some less than helpful habits through the years. One of those less helpful habits is that early in my career I gave up on keeping up with Christmas greetings. Most years we succeeded in getting out an annual letter of greeting, but it was as late as Valentine’s Day some years. And there were years when we didn’t get our letters out at all. The thing about that habit is that I really enjoy receiving annual letters from friends and relatives. i read every one and enjoy the stories. I even endure some very bad poetry and a few writers who obsess about unnecessary details. On the whole, however, annual letters are a joy for me. And the best way to receive annual letters is to send them.

Since retirement, we have managed to get a letter out every year, though we have not always gotten the task done by Christmas day. I figure that since in the Christian calendar Christmas is a 12-day season and not a single day, if the bulk of the letters are in the mail by January 6 they count as Christmas letters. And as far as I know I’ve responded to everyone who send us a card or letter and sent out a few more than we have received.

My confession is that it is already the 27th and although there is a draft of our annual letter on my computer, I still haven’t gotten it ready to send. And, in the tradition of my pre-retirement version of a messy desk, I also have other open documents on my computer including a poem I’m preparing for an open mic event, a bibliography and syllabus for a course I’m teaching in January, the manuscript of a book project and sermon notes for Sunday. Joy of joys! I know a pastor who is taking a bit of vacation after Christmas, so I get to preach this Sunday. She told me how grateful she is to have someone to fill the pulpit and I have tried to tell her how grateful I am to have been invited.

I think that the struggle to get out our annual letter is a bit different this year. There is something about the year now ending that is a real challenge to summarize in words. 2024 has been an unusually challenging year.

I could go the route of some of those who have sent me letters who sent multiple pages of detailed news about the lives of their children and grandchildren. One of our favorite correspondents seems to have freed her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren from needing to write their own letters because she is so complete at reporting their years in her letter. Since I consider her children and grandchildren to be my friends, I eagerly read the news of all of them. As far as I know her children don’t send annual letters, at least i’m not on their list if they do. That’s the problem, I guess. I send our letter to the matriarch of the family, but not to her descendants. That style, however, is not mine. In the first place our son and his wife get their letter out on time and do a good job of reporting. More importantly, while I don’t mind sharing some of their lives with my friends, I feel that they are capable of telling their own stories to the people they choose to share with.

I suppose I could go the route of some of my peers, writing a detailed month-by-month report of activities. That would require some research on my part because I don’t remember what I did each month and I don’t keep paper calendars. However, I do have digital records and am married to someone who keeps good paper calendars. Furthermore, I have noticed that when you get to a certain age, which I have achieved, those month by month reports start to contain more and more medical history and more and more reports of funerals attended. Some annual letters we receive are mostly reports of who died and who ended up in the hospital. It isn’t quite my style.

I’ve thought about writing a poem and I have been writing a lot more poetry lately. But I am uncertain of the quality of my poetry and suspect that it lacks much. And I find that I rarely “complete” a poem. I keep wanting to make little changes each time I read it. I fear I would never finish a poem.

So, I’m sticking to the old plan, at least for this year. There will be an annual letter from our family and most of our friends and family will receive it before January 10.