A holiday reminder from Garrison Keillor

While browsing in the bookstore, I found Garrison Keillor’s comments about Christmas newsletters. Written in 2006, he quotes one newsletter in which “the writer bursts the bounds on modesty.”

This immodest writer reports: “Tara was top scorer on the Lady Cougers soccer team and won the lead role in the college production of Antigone, which by the way they are performing in the original Greek. Her essay on chaos theory as an investment strategy will be in the next issue of Fortune magazine, the same week she’ll appear as a model in Vogue. How she does what she does and still makes Phi Beta Kappa is a wonderment to us all. And, yes, she is still volunteering at the homeless shelter.”

Keillor made me smile, especially since Jerry and I write an annual Christmas newsletter. He also reminded me that my children don’t have to be perfect—even at Christmas. And my husband doesn’t have to be perfect either. Or anyone in my extended family.

And, most important, I’ m reminded that I’m not required to be perfect—with the perfect house, the perfect gifts and the perfect meals for Christmas.

–Joy