Everyone has gotten them at one time or another – a Christmas brag letter. “Our oldest son was elected student council president, will be playing division 1 college football as the starting quarterback, and has begun his own business which has raked in over $1 million dollars in three months.”

Actually, can I tell you a secret? I like getting those letters. I don’t mind you bragging, cause I have some pretty incredible kids myself. I have sent out a few of my own; however, I’ve become somewhat famous for my unique Christmas letters. Every year, I feel the pressure to come up with a new one – perhaps humorous or sweet, always different.

Some suggestions I have tried over the years:
1. The year we built our house, I wrote our Christmas letter like a real estate ad so I could describe it. At the end I wrote something like, “And special thanks goes to Brian for truck painting.” (He got into the paint one day while we were busy and painted the tailgate of Doug’s truck!)

2. In our own words: when the kids were still pretty little, I interviewed them for our letter. Cute, cute!

3. Acrostic poem: These are the poems where each line starts with a different letter of the alphabet. I spelled out “Merry Christmas”. ex:
M – Much love to all of you
E – Everyone here is doing well
and so on.

4. limerick – I wrote a limerick for each one of us. Here is a good description of limericks.

5. The 12 Days of Christmas: I adapted the song to read something like:
In the year 2006, the good Lord gave to us:
12 months of health
11 year old son
and so on.

6. Last year, I did our favorite Christmas carols. For Brian, it was:
Jingle Keys, Jingle Keys (he’s about to get his license!)

7. This year, it was a multiple choice quiz. ex:
What branch of the military did Brian join this year?
A. army     B. navy     C. air force     D. marines

Each of us got a question and I answered them on the bottom.

8. newspaper. “The Tolsma Times”. I happen to have a newsletter program at work, so it’s not hard for me to set up columns. I’ve gotten these, too, and they’re cute.

Hope that gives you some ideas, if not for this year, but for next! Hmmm, I’d better start thinking about next year!