“The genre [the holiday newsletter] is a difficult
one. A classic holiday letter must—like a Facebook post —mean something
sensible to a wide variety of recipients. Too upbeat and it feels boastful or
fake. Share unpleasant details and it's Too Much Information. Keep it light and
you risk seeming banal. Brevity can confuse. Prolixity is worse.
“Even for a skilled writer this is a challenging
brief, and neither you nor I are Dorothy Parker or Oscar Wilde. And yet some of
us persist.”—“Underground Economist” columnist Tim Harford, “In Praise of the
Christmas Newsletter,” The Financial Times, Nov. 28-29, 2020
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