A good holiday letter starts on a happy note, keeps to the highlights of your year, sounds like you, and makes sense to every reader on your list. Leave out the bragging, and check the spelling before you print it.
As the end of the year comes closer, people start thinking about the holidays: travel plans, time off work, and who will host the family get-togethers. For many, it is also a time of some worry, because they know they have to sit down and write the yearly holiday letter to send with their cards.
Getting started can be hard. If you are stuck, a writing prompt can help. Once you are past the blank page, the tips below show you what to do, and what not to do, so that your holiday letter is the best it can be.
Start happy
Tone is very important in a holiday letter, and it starts with the first line. You may well feel that you "can't believe how quickly the year has flown by", but that is not a great way to start the letter, because the tone is a little negative.
Instead, start by saying how glad you are to have the chance to connect with your friends and family. Or talk about how happy and busy your family has been over the past year. Set the tone from the very beginning, so that your readers are in the right frame of mind for the rest of the letter.
Keep it shorter than you want
It can be tempting to write a detailed account of your year, so that everyone is fully up to date on your life. Avoid it. The first reason is that few people write well enough to hold anyone's attention for that long, whatever they write about.
The real reason to skip most of the details is that people do not want them: they want the highlights. If you include too many details, most readers will skip over them. And the people who would take the time to read a four-page letter probably know the details already.
Be yourself
Another temptation is to try to impress people. Some writers use bigger words than usual, or pile on adjectives to make everything sound bigger and better.
Your friends do not want a letter from Ernest Hemingway; they want to hear from you. Write your holiday letter the same way you talk. If the tone or the words are different from the way they think of you, they will be distracted, and they might even think you hired someone else to write it.
Remember your audience
Think about who you are sending the letter to. If it only goes to family and close friends, this is not an issue, but most people have a much longer mailing list. That list probably includes people who do not know how old your children are or what your pets are called.
For example, do not write "Dave is finally a happy Hawkeye." Instead, write something like "Our oldest son, Dave, has finally realized his dream and is a freshman at the University of Iowa."
Don't embellish
It is tempting to turn your holiday letter into a brag-a-thon and make everything sound a little bigger and better than it really was. But if your letter sounds too good to be true, you will lose your readers' interest, and they may start to doubt that what you tell them is true. And if you embellish and they do believe everything, it is likely to catch up with you later.
Check the spelling
The final step before you print your holiday letter and put it in your cards is to check it for mistakes. You do not want to spend hours on your letter and then be teased by friends and family for years because you wrote holdiay. The Spell Checker marks spelling and grammar mistakes in your text before it goes to the printer.
Writing your yearly holiday letter to bring everyone up to date should be fun, not stressful. With these tips, it can be a good experience for both the writer and the reader. For more ideas on what to write, see these Christmas letter ideas.