I was thinking about writing a memoir. But there were certain misgivings about that thought since writing a self biography reeks of pompous self-absorption. Not that I’m NOT pompously self absorbed, but as I pondered I came to realize I had already written a big chunk of the story of my life. Thirty years worth anyway. It had taken the form of our annual family Christmas newsletter.
For over 30 years I had chronicled the adventures and misadventures of myself, my wife, and daughter. All I had to do was compile the newsletters and the story of our lives would be told.
I know what you’re thinking: “Ugh! Christmas letters! Could there be anything more tedious and pretentious than someone droning on about Junior’s soccer practice and Aunt Tillie’s lumbago? Please,shoot me now.”
Ironically, those are the very same thoughts that led to the creation of The Christmas Star. I wanted to create the antithesis of the common Christmas newsletter, one that accomplished the traditional and practical goals of updating friends and relatives with the news, but still offered a modicum of entertainment value, a little education, and maybe even an inspiring thought or two
As this volume illustrates, it took a while for that goal to gel into a consistent form. This book begins in the year 1989 with a classical Christmas letter, created with the latest technology: the typewriter. The title "Christmas Star” did not appear until 1994. In between are some odd experiments triggered by the birth of desktop publishing and acquisition of our first family computer. One of those experimental detours is 1993’s bizarre surrealist parody of a traditional Christmas letter. It was fun, but nobody seemed to get it.
Finally, the following year the idea of turning family news into a tabloid scandal sheet came about and the first issue of The Christmas Star was born. It was printed on legal paper and folded in half, which made a nice insert for a Christmas Card. And it was distributed by snail mail. As time went on its production progressed from laser printer to lithography to a combination of print and on-line distribution and finally toan on-line-only publication, paralleling the world of mainstream publishing.
When I set about assembling 30+ years of issues of this publication it became evident to me that the collective impact of the documents was greater than the sum of the parts. If taken together you find that, beyond the superficial Christmas letter stuff (and jokes that fall flat), you begin to see within the greater context the aspirations, triumphs, disappointments and overall human-ness of a small family of father, mother, and daughter. You can start to read between the lines of the superficial to detect the real concerns and real joys of real people.
You also get the sense of traveling through time as each issue contains ample references to the zeitgeist in which it was written. If you lived through those times, you may be reminded of front page headlines of the time that no one even thinks about now or remembers at all.
As the curtain goes up on our little saga it is 1989. We meet the family of Tim, Mauriene, and Bonnie. Tim and Mauriene had met in 1972, were married in 1976 and moved from Colorado Springs to Southern California where Tim was attending college. Bonnie came along in 1979, so she is all of ten in our earliest entry. Also in our first issue Tim has already spent more than a decade in the visual effects industry. Mauriene has been running a catering business, attempting to help the family make ends meet. Bonnie, meanwhile, is intensely focused on being the precocious child she was always meant to be.
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I was thinking about writing a memoir. But there were certain misgivings about that thought since writing a self biography reeks of pompous self-absorption. Not that I’m NOT pompously self absorbed, but as I pondered I came to realize I had already written a big chunk of the story of my life. Thirty years worth anyway. It had taken the form of our annual family Christmas newsletter.
For over 30 years I had chronicled the adventures and misadventures of myself, my wife, and daughter. All I had to do was compile the newsletters and the story of our lives would be told.
I know what you’re thinking: “Ugh! Christmas letters! Could there be anything more tedious and pretentious than someone droning on about Junior’s soccer practice and Aunt Tillie’s lumbago? Please,shoot me now.”
Ironically, those are the very same thoughts that led to the creation of The Christmas Star. I wanted to create the antithesis of the common Christmas newsletter, one that accomplished the traditional and practical goals of updating friends and relatives with the news, but still offered a modicum of entertainment value, a little education, and maybe even an inspiring thought or two
As this volume illustrates, it took a while for that goal to gel into a consistent form. This book begins in the year 1989 with a classical Christmas letter, created with the latest technology: the typewriter. The title "Christmas Star” did not appear until 1994. In between are some odd experiments triggered by the birth of desktop publishing and acquisition of our first family computer. One of those experimental detours is 1993’s bizarre surrealist parody of a traditional Christmas letter. It was fun, but nobody seemed to get it.
Finally, the following year the idea of turning family news into a tabloid scandal sheet came about and the first issue of The Christmas Star was born. It was printed on legal paper and folded in half, which made a nice insert for a Christmas Card. And it was distributed by snail mail. As time went on its production progressed from laser printer to lithography to a combination of print and on-line distribution and finally toan on-line-only publication, paralleling the world of mainstream publishing.
When I set about assembling 30+ years of issues of this publication it became evident to me that the collective impact of the documents was greater than the sum of the parts. If taken together you find that, beyond the superficial Christmas letter stuff (and jokes that fall flat), you begin to see within the greater context the aspirations, triumphs, disappointments and overall human-ness of a small family of father, mother, and daughter. You can start to read between the lines of the superficial to detect the real concerns and real joys of real people.
You also get the sense of traveling through time as each issue contains ample references to the zeitgeist in which it was written. If you lived through those times, you may be reminded of front page headlines of the time that no one even thinks about now or remembers at all.
As the curtain goes up on our little saga it is 1989. We meet the family of Tim, Mauriene, and Bonnie. Tim and Mauriene had met in 1972, were married in 1976 and moved from Colorado Springs to Southern California where Tim was attending college. Bonnie came along in 1979, so she is all of ten in our earliest entry. Also in our first issue Tim has already spent more than a decade in the visual effects industry. Mauriene has been running a catering business, attempting to help the family make ends meet. Bonnie, meanwhile, is intensely focused on being the precocious child she was always meant to be.
With that background, let’s begin...