You know those annoying letters people send at Christmastime?  Here's one of ours.  (The names have been changed to protect the innocent.) 

 Dear Friends And Rellies:

Well this year has flown by so fast! I can't believe it's time to start putting the family's Christmas letter together. It's been a pretty exciting year for the Hooligans. My job as an itinerant systems analyst has been going real well. I had an eleven-week vacation this summer that was kind of fun, except of course there was that no-money thing again. One day while I was off work I told Mother that maybe I could start an e-mail chain letter where everybody who gets it would send a dollar to the person who sent it and we could get rich that way. The only thing that was holding me back was coming up with a good name. She suggested "Spamway" and I figured if she wasn't going to take it seriously I'd best just let the matter drop.

Mother and I had a real exciting night out not long ago. We bought one of those two-for-one coupon books from one of the kids at church and one Friday I was feeling flush so we decided to give it a try. We got all dolled up and hopped in the pickup. It was all spiffed up too, having just been freshly washed and waxed and vacuumed, so we were feeling quite posh as we rolled up to a Chinese restaurant in the city. Unfortunately the place had gone under, so we looked and found a coupon for a nearby Mexican restaurant. I started to get an idea that maybe the coupon book people had been a little optimistic, as the Mexican restaurant had gone out of business too! I felt kind of bad for Mother, as she'd been looking forward to getting off the farm for a night. We drove back toward home and I had an eye toward heading over to the Arby's drive-thru but my stomach was grumbling and it was getting late so I told Mother to look in that coupon book and see if there was anything for an eatery near where we were. Well she spotted one for a place we'd never been before and we were both hungry enough for an adventure so we pulled up to a bistro called the Nina Lou. I thought "Nina Lou" sounded like the name of a boat and so I reckoned the place would have kind of a nautical theme.

Well we went in and I saw right away if the Nina Lou had a nautical theme it was Early Shipwreck. It was dark and kind of run down, and there were some forlorn people who looked like survivors huddled around a bar in the middle of the room. They all stopped talking when we walked in and looked us both up and down! Well maybe they'd never seen two folks all gussied up like we were, and I feared they might have been embarrassed for us, being out of place and all, so I thought maybe we'd just ask for directions to the Interstate and head back the way we came. But Mother said no, we came all this way and we had a two-for-one coupon and Darn if we were going to let it go to waste. So I said all right, all right and we sat down in a booth. Mother seemed to take to the place right away but it put me in mind of a made-for-TV movie I saw once where a gang of motorcycle thugs rode up to a diner, beat up a fellow that was minding his own business and made off with his wife. Well I wasn't looking forward to a beating and I knew I'd miss Mother something fierce for a while, so I was just as glad when the only other folks that came in were a couple of guys from the factory across the road and their wives. The truth be told, the food was pretty good and the waitress was kind of cute, so maybe it wasn't such a bad place after all. But I was just as glad to pay our bill and be on our way. Those folks were awful put out that we showed them up, even though they tried to cover it up with a lot of loud talk and raucous laughter.

Mother herself has had a banner year. That guard job at the bank never did pan out, but she discovered that she has a knack for writing. She wrote an article about "Triumphing Over Chronic Pain" that was picked up by the journal of the Eureka Pain Management Clinic and Natural Stimulant Company of Tittabawassee. I asked her from where she drew her broad knowledge of pain that doesn't go away and she said that I was her inspiration. Isn't that the sweetest thing? I said that I would try to keep her supplied with material for her articles. She said she was counting on it.

She's also still got that volunteer job with the Boy Scouts, which she's taken right to heart. She even went along when the boys in the troop built trout habitats in a stream as a project for a young fellow who's working on Eagle Scout. I was busted out with pride the way she got right in and hiked along that swampy stream bank with the best of them. She was only discomfited once, when one of the younger boys caught a garter snake and showed it to her. He figured her for more of a naturalist than she is, and he seemed to think if he held it up right close she'd be able to identify it more easily. Well to her credit, Mother didn't let out a scream. She did make a kind of a high-pitched sound, almost a whistle, and Darn if it didn't set off that snake and the little bugger clamped down on the bridge of her glasses! Needless to say, Mother got downright set off too! The two of them pitched and whirled through the underbrush for a ways until that poor snake had had enough and unclamped himself. Some of the boys found it later, wrapped around a small poplar tree like a Caduceus. They wanted to keep it but I said no, he's had enough excitement for one day. The whole episode ended happily, as the boys not only will have nice places to take their kids fishing at in the years to come, but now there's also a nice trail blazed back to it.

Junior was home with us for a while earlier this year. That apartment he had last winter was awful nice but it kind of lost its lustre when his buddies moved out after the fire so he let it go. He changed schools over the summer and now he's in Florida where he can follow both of his dreams, to study pre-med and hone his heavy-equipment operating skills year-round. He got to his new school just in time for the hurricane season and not long after wrote home that he'd seen his first alligator on the road. That boy just is not "detail-oriented!" If I'd seen an alligator on the road I'd at least have taken note of what it was driving. But being young he didn't think to look real close. I think maybe it was just a Tail Gator.

A lot of folks have been asking after Grandpa and I'm pleased to report that things are looking up for the old gentleman. He had a colonoscopy a while back and the doctor said there was no sign of brain damage that he could see. I'm just not sure what some people think they see when they look at Grandpa. At his age I can understand him seeing things that aren't there but I don't have an explanation for everybody else. So let's just get any confusion cleared up. Grandpa still has a pretty good mane of white hair. I looked in a bird guide and found that buzzards are mostly bald-headed. Although he does hunch over a bit more than he used to, so maybe that's what's confusing folks.

I could go on and on about all the blessings that the Good Lord saw fit to bestow on us this year but I don't want to start bragging lest our less pious friends would think that we have an inside track to the Heavenlies. So I'll just wish everyone Happy Holidays. Bye for now, and save for your old age!

Seasons Greetings,

The Hooligans