Not Your Average Christmas Letter

My mom has begun gifting us things from her house, like vintage ornaments from our Polish grandparents and a Norman Rockwell coffee table book. Last year, she sent to my siblings and me photocopies of the yearly Christmas letters she and my dad sent from 1976 through 2016.

These were typed letters on white and green copy paper, sometimes with a Christmas illustration from a kid, held together with a staple and filed in a red folder. In the years well before social media, and even email, these letters functioned as a yearly update to every person in our family’s network.

The letters started when my family was just (just!) my four older brothers and my two parents. The first year, my mom wrote in parallel structure to convey what the holidays meant to her and my dad. “Christmas is home…Christmas is family…Christmas is reflection…” Between these openings, she’d write an update of the family, with news of another child on the way.

Other years, the letter started with a description of our little home in Green Bay.

“It is late in the evening. A dim light glows in the living room where the TV-2 weatherman has just announced a winter storm watch. The purple advent candle burns on the table in the dining area and the sweet aroma of buttery pecan sticks in the oven permeates the kitchen.” (December 1977)

The letters described each kid from oldest to youngest, the list of kids growing every few years.

“Bill is ten and in fifth grade. He now plays the saxophone and every evening at five o’clock the living room vibrates with his music.” (December 1983)

“Mary is almost two. Need we say anything else? She is forever on the go and forever into things, forever trying to imitate others in almost everything they do.” (December 1978)

By some measures, these stories are ordinary — we were a middle-class, Midwest family with a bunch of kids going through the challenges of life. And yet, in the specifics, in the lyrical quality of my mom’s prose, in the imperfect typewriter alignment on the page, in the careful description of each child’s personality, my mom was telling an extraordinary story that far exceeded a yearly update, a mere report. Some years, the descriptions were heartwarming; other years, the narrative was heartbreaking.

Between the letters’ beautiful imperfections, my mom developed characters, wove a narrative about a large, complicated family that continued to unfold each year, and immersed us in the sensory imagery of our home in Green Bay. To each recipient of these letters, she was gifting them a rich, memorable story that connected them to us.

Since reading these letters a few days ago, they have stayed in my heart, and I feel closer to my family — a family that is, in part, no longer physically with me.

It turns out that stories are, maybe more than anything else, the gift that keeps on giving.

Little did I know that it was through the many storytelling traditions like this that my parents instilled in me the desire to extract extraordinary narratives from seemingly ordinary sources, propelling me through a rewarding career of telling others’ stories.

On this last workday of the year, I’m reflecting on what has been the most challenging year of my professional life — it has been for a lot of other people too. Certainly, there were factors beyond my control, like the economy, but I think the bigger problem was that I strayed from this core desire.

In business, it is all too common that during a period of growth, we feel tempted to grab all opportunities crossing our path, even if they might not be right for our business or our talents. Without realizing it, my company and I lost our purpose, distracted by how I thought I was supposed to grow.

Thanks to the Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses program, thanks to the many friends who encouraged me, thanks to our longtime clients who continue to hire us, and thanks to my mom’s gift, I’m ending the year far more hopeful than I was when the year started, strengthened with the renewed purpose to tell extraordinary stories lifted from everyday life.

To that end, we have an exciting new line of business that we’ll be launching in 2025, and I can’t wait to share it with the world when we are ready. Until then, I wish that all of you may one day receive the gift of a well-told story that stays with you forever.