My mother, in a slightly mocking tone, would read out loud the pages of single-space sentences recounting the Dalgren’s past year of accumulating successes.

Every year the Dalgren children were wonderful, smart, and taking the world by storm. Husband, Clark, who made a million in the sunflower seed business, annually took the family on a fabulous trip somewhere exotic like Portugal, Aruba, or Port Antilles. Once the Dalgrens visited Japan. Their attached, family portrait showed them all in kimonos. The Dalgren letter typically concluded with bubbles of Christmas gratitude and a big, curvy sweep of signature.

By the time my mother finished the letter we would be laughing hysterically--my sister needing to pee and my father, generally quiet and respectful, giggling behind his newspaper. Mom would drop the letter into the card basket and blurt out between peals of laughter, "Those Dalgrens sure know how to have fun."

Needless to say, our family never wrote a carbon-copied holiday letter, and to this day I always chuckle in memory of the Dalgrens whenever I receive such a letter. It’s not that I’m a minimalist who is more comfortable just signing my name and letting the little message on the card take care of the rest. It’s more the fact that the Dalgrens were so full of themselves. They never wrote anything about their car breaking down, or a child flunking Spanish, or their son, Anthony, being busted, or that Clark slaved 14-hour days so the family could visit Portugal for a week.

My mom still gets such newsletters every Christmas. Over the holiday season she’ll read one to me by phone. We’ll try to giggle like we used to, but it’s not the same. I know the Christmas notes I receive nowadays don’t have any pretense of a model family. Most seem to be written with unlikely soulfulness, perhaps under the influence of an eggnog haze.

Take my former college housemate, Ned. He’s an orthopedic surgeon, happily married with three kids, in Roanoke, Virginia. "I love my wife. I adore my kids. But I no longer have my romantic ideals about medicine. There are too many parasites, too many wrongs. My only aim in medicine is to keep people from having pain."

Another college pal, Allan, has always approached jobs the way I approach dating--with earnestness, wide-open hope, and suspicions of how long the feelings of the other party will last. He writes, "Beth still sells real estate and we’re doing OK. I took a job teaching at Duke, but ennui is spreading like ringworm."

It’s not all that peachy either for my friend, Patty, living in Southern California. "Thanks for the CD on my birthday, but my car was burglarized for the fourth time. The CD went with the stereo. Now I carry a gun."

My Christmas letter has yet to be written this year, mainly because of other deadlines in my life. The other day, waiting in holiday traffic, I did begin mentally composing a description of my epic year.

At first, in wishful thinking, I recalled only my achievements and travels. I skated backward in time collecting moments when deadlines were always met, when traffic lights were always green, when the sun shined on my back. I ended up with content so close to the Dalgren letter I began hearing my mother’s laugh.

The truth is that as Charlie Dickens wrote, this year was the best and worst of times. A good friend of mine died. My body continues to fall apart at a frightening pace. My bank account, like my life, remains perpetually on edge. I continue to lose little chunks of hope as time passes.

On the other hand, life, though full of shortcomings, is good. I climbed a big pinnacle. I began a new book. I’ve even met a delightful woman. So...

I have yet to actually begin my cheerful Christmas letter, but it will probably go out sometime in January, proving in itself that everything’s cool, but far from perfect.