Joyce Armor - The Tacky Christmas Letters

The Tacky Christmas Letters

Copyright 2019 Joyce Armor

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The Tacky Christmas Letters

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Joyce Armor

Table of Contents

I began sending Christmas cards whileattending college in Ohio. Later, when I moved to Florida, thenNevada, then California, I wrote long notes on the cards each yearto bring family and friends up to speed with my life.

Then I got married and had a couple ofbabies and had surprisingly little time to write Christmas cards.Thats when I started buying smaller and smaller cards so Iwouldnt have to write as much. A few years into raising my twosons, I finally threw up my hands in frustration and wrote one ofthose tacky one-size-fits-all holiday letters.

Over the years, ones of people (as opposedto hundreds or thousands of people) have requested that I publishmy Christmas epistles. I finally bowed to this enormous pressure,and here they arethe last 30 years of the dreaded Tacky ChristmasLetter.

December 1990

Dear Friends, Relatives &Countrymen:

The only thing worse than sending out one ofthose Christmas letters is having the audacity to send it late.Yeah, wellthats pretty much the kind of year its been. Thehighlights of December alone include Brady getting stitches in hisforehead (thats the last time hell tell Dylan to toss him abaseball bat when hes up a tree), our dogs defoliating theChristmas tree and discovering the spot behind the sofa where Dylanhas been spitting out his vitamins for the past year.

If I havent dropped youoff my Christmas card list yet, I must not be rich and famous likeIm sposed to be. No new books published this year but my claim tofame is that Garrison Keillors agent (whether I can spell his nameor not) is trying to sell my novel, SpermWails . Sounds good but try to make a carpayment with that information.

If the term starvingartist holds any meaning for you, youll understand why Ifinallyafter lo these many yearshad to go out and get a real job. Well, sort of.Im working at Rip Off Press, publisher and/or distributor ofunderground comic-book classics such as The Fabulous Furry FreakBrothers, Zippy the Pinhead and Leather Nun. Have I found myniche or what?

Brady is in first grade and hates it (exceptfor recess) although hes doing well. Hes okay if everything goesas expected but doesnt handle change well. Most days hes just asubstitute bus driver away from hysteria. The day I had to put himon the bus with a six-hook fishing lure stuck in his pocket Ithought Id have to call a therapist. Dylan is 4-1/2, a trueTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtle addict and Bradys best friend whentheyre not trying to kill each other. Hes still a very funny guy,the spit-out vitamin pile aside.

Tom had his annual foot surgery, twice thisyear, I think, still works at the Post Office and still plans tobecome a chocolate mogul. Right now a crazy man thinks Toms havingan affair with his 50-year-old girlfriend. (A sane man would knowif Tom were having an affair, it would be with a 22-year-oldbimbo.)

So thats 1990 in a nutshell. Were living,as always, on the edge of chaos but are healthy and borderlinelucid. We wish you the same in the coming year and hope you donttake this as permission to send us one of these tacky letters nextyear.

Merry Christmas,

December 1991

Dear Close Personal Friends and/orRelatives:

If you havent received oneof our insipid Christmas letters before, it looks like your luckjust ran out. As a concession, however, Im actually trying to getit out before Christmas this year.

Well, it was another exciting year inbeautiful downtown Auburn. Dylan started kindergarten and soccer,and Brady became a soccer-playing, Cub-Scouting 2nd grader. We wereglad to get out of first grade, which was never the same afterBrady brought home the class bunny for the weekend and our doggiesdefurred it. Also on the kid front, we only had to go to theemergency room once this year (a record), but I did have to answerthe same question posed by the doctor three times in one month(about Dylan): Did he lose consciousness?

Tom is still a chocolatemogul trapped inside the body of a postal worker, and Im still afamous writer trapped inside the body of a computer operator at RipOff Press. I havent sold my novel SpermWails yet and am still writing the AndrewsSisters book, but I do have some childrens poetryif you canbelieve thatin a book just out called Kids Pick the Funniest Poems .

In July I took the boys toMichigan for a family reunion (although nobody in our familyis from Michigan)which was a riot, except for that little problem with the vomitingdisease that Dylan gave to 24 of the people there. We also spent agreat week in Canada with the family, where the kids got to knowtheir cousins and other strangers and Brady learned to waterski.

Now that Im a member of Bay Area BrownsBackers (rooting for the only team that can snatch defeat from thejaws of victory), I see all the Browns games at 49er Pizza withsimilarly afflicted people and life has all new meaning.

As the years go by and we notice a gray hairor two, a few wrinkles and a tiny patch of cellulite (the size of afootball field), more than ever we (thats the royal we)appreciate family and old friends, even if they rememberembarrassing incidents from our past. Best wishes for a happy,healthy and exciting 1992 in which none of your bunnies aredefurred.

Christmas gooses,

December 1992

Hi There, New or Old Friends and/or BelovedRelatives:

Holy cow, 1992 is almostover. I suppose any year that Im still lucid enough to identifycant be all bad. (No need to worry about getting one of thoseobnoxiously perky Christmas letter from me .)

Aside from the fact that Im sending you myTacky Christmas Letter this year without any trumped-up excuses, Iguess the biggest news of 1992 is that Tom and I are getting adivorce. I was hoping we could do it amicably and maturely, butlets just say Im rubber, hes phlegm; anything he says bouncesoff me and sticks on him.

The kids are doing great, not includingrampant chicken pox even as I write. Their school shifted to ayear-round schedule this year, so we have bizarre months off whenwe could take exotic vacations if we could find a way to get thereand somebody to pay for them. In July we went to Canada, where weexperienced the worst July weather theyd had in Ontario since1984, but we still had a swell time, especially on the way back,when we got stuck overnight in Chicago. Then in November we flew toOhio for four days (Columbus) for a book fair in Wooster. Besidesthat, I only had to answer the Did he lose consciousness?question once this year and didnt have to go to the emergency roomat all (except when my parents visited).