In my Christmas letter, volume 54 of the Kerchner Chronicle, <\/i>I promised readers an extension of the narrative here on the Mindworkers blog.\u00a0 That was probably a mistake.<\/p>\n
Christmas letters are a difficult genre.\u00a0 They veer from cute to seriously boring, and it\u2019s hard to say anything substantive about family issues\u2014no, no, too much information\u2014religion, politics, economics, anxiety, sickness, or death.\u00a0 Which is why there are lots of vacation pictures.<\/p>\n
There are a few memorable variations.\u00a0 A friend of my parents used to draw clever cartoons and produce them on blueprint paper.\u00a0 One particularly foolhardy relative devotes most of his letter saying snarky things about his wife, which he doesn\u2019t believe, or says he doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 But for the most part there are straightforward narratives about the past year, and particularly about family gatherings and travels.<\/p>\n
I thought I might say more.\u00a0 Forget talking about anxiety.\u00a0 We\u2019re not Kerchners, not the Kardashians.\u00a0 Living in full public view holds little appeal.\u00a0 And we\u2019re not going much into family revelations, not that there are many.\u00a0 I write about politics every day in \u2018On California.\u2019<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n