I once knew someone who would periodically send out updates on their lives in the form of a family newsletter. Although it has never been my style, it definitely did spark an idea that once a year, yourself and your family could pose for a few silly pics in Christmas costumes and add them to a format used to send to your family and friends near and far. A one size fits all kind of approach.
You could have sections for each member of the family, with their picture, a quote from them about how they are feeling about the festive season and a general update about their lives, achievements, struggles and progress throughout the year. If you are brave enough, you could even task those old enough with writing their own section.
Other segments could include a few favourite jokes, memes, recipes, activities like word searches or crosswords. Enough to fill a page, without too much effort of trying to think of what to write.
https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/free-christmas-letter-templates-1356285
Another favourite of mine is to find funny puns on the internet and weave them into a letter. Open with some sort of personal and maybe somewhat offensive joke that they will understand, then go on to apologise and say that you are sorry for making that joke when you know they already have so much on their plate at this time of year, literally!
Then go on to say that you thought of doing one of those advent calendars where each of your friends writes something nice about you, but that they didn’t have enough friends, or not with anything nice to say at least.
The next should be a joke at your own expense like how you know they only hang out with you to feel better about themselves, because compared to you they are a genius, but not smart enough to walk away.
Make a joke about how you enjoy that your presence in their life is rewarded with presents (if you are gift exchangers) This can open for you to mention your gifts are better than Santa’s because they don’t believe in Santa, which is just as well because Santa doesn’t believe in them either!
Close with a sentiment about how their friendship is a gift, optional joke about you being under the tree because you’re the best gift in their life, and how much you look forward to another year of love and laughter together.
These letters are for your funny light hearted friends – know your audience first! A theme can make the jokes funnier, depending on what you and your friend joke about the most. If you are teachers, you may fill it with funny jokes relating to that. If you are both bigger people and joke about that then that can be a theme. If you are both dark and make puns about how your dreams are dead and you have no other friends, that can be a theme. If you aren’t sure though, err on the side of caution, as you want it to be well received.
The last one is of course, a nice letter, filled with positive sentiments about how much you value them, all the ways they have added to your life, your favourite memory for the year with them, a photo of you both, something you are looking forward to sharing in the next year with them and a sentiment about being much older together too. It needs to be generic enough to be interchangeable as a template, but specific enough that they don’t feel it was generic! For ideas or sentiments check out this post.
There are no rules, use google to find jokes and quotes that you like, screenshot them for yourself and figure out ways to round them up nicely into sentences. Or use the templates provided! Have Fun!
❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx
