What happens when you send mail to strangers

Reviving the Christmas Letter tradition… kind of

We might have all forgotten, but once there was a time when elderly relatives and old family friends would send out long, meandering letters around Christmas and New Years.

The ones my family got were typed, printed and crammed into festive cards. Perhaps this wasn’t always the case, but I remember them being comically grim. They were like Christmas crackers, but with news of a cancer diagnosis instead of a joke inside.

My favourite ones would list medical news and tragic deaths of people you’d never heard of alongside incredibly banal family updates. Yes, neighbour Beryl passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack. Very sad. But also, did you hear that my grandkid was a turkey in the school Christmas play?

Perhaps laughing at other people's misfortunes is not strictly in the festive season’s spirit, but truly I couldn’t help it. The absurdity of those juxtapositions were sublime. I know found art is a thing, but is there also found comedy? I loved them so much that eventually I decided to do one of my own.

It’s now become an annual tradition.

Every year I put an open call to my paltry 1,200 Instagram followers asking for their addresses. I reward their bravery with an honest letter about the last year of my life.

Last year I was “helped” by a bunch of disruptive, skill-less foster kittens.

So why am I bringing this up?

Once again, it is Christmas letter time. If you want to be included, I’m happy to send you one. Just reply back to this email with your postal address. Like anything I do, this is a ridiculous time and money sink with no personal material gain. But that’s kind of the point.

A friend recently said that if I had a biography, it would be called “A Small But Loyal Following”. It wasn’t intended to be mean, but I felt a bit stung by their words anyway. In a world where audiences are global and views counted in the millions, its difficult to not grow disheartened by my small reach.

The antidote to this feeling is, I think, in the making.

In January, I read a book written by a Japanese author called Shoji Morimoto. Morimoto’s job is to act as a kind of neutral companion. He gets booked to accompany strangers on mundane tasks, with the important caveat that he will do nothing. The bookings are requested on Twitter and, so long as expenses are paid and Morimoto is only asked to passively participate, he will likely agree.

There was one line in that book that, when I read it, shuddered through me like electricity.

On the motivation behind his work Morimoto wrote, “it’s about enjoying the absurdity of swimming against the tide of efficiency”.

If there is something I believe in, it is this.

It’s never been easier to be famous these days, thanks to social media. One of my favourite topics this year has been trying to intellectualise why, in the ocean of content, some people and things go viral when other worthy creative works do not.

But I think that art – at its purest form – serves no other purpose than to exist. The more stupid, the less efficient, the less shareable the better. The Christmas letter is an excellent culmination of those elements. A totally valueless piece of ephemera which takes an enormous amount of work to complete.

Adorable but useless

The futility is quite liberating. It forces the author to fall in love with the process.

It is fair to say that I’m in a rocky relationship with the process. I’m not always faithful, you see. There are beaches, books, wines and boys competing for its time. These other things ask little of me than to be enjoyed.

But beaches get cloudy, books get boring, wine leaves hangovers, and boys disappointment. All the while, the making patiently waits. Steady as a mountain asking to be summited.

And so, even though I am often tired, and even more often, disheartened, I keep climbing.

It’s been hard at times, but I couldn’t have done it without my companions. That is you, my small but loyal audience. Thank you for coming along with me this year. Every nice reply email, message and kind word in person has been cherished. Literally. I keep a folder of all the lovely things that have been sent to me. They have kept me going.

So you know, the Carpet newsletter will be going on a little break of sorts over January. I’ll be re-publishing and re-writing some old articles. I’ll be back early next year with lots of new topics.

Thank you again. I’ll be in your inbox next Monday and every Monday after that for the foreseeable future.

Steph