Morrow Family Christmas Letter #8: Christmas 2009

Over the past few years, the Morrow Family Christmas Letter (MFCL) has endured its share of ups and downs. A writer’s strike and housing market crash threatened to shelve of our annual ‘envelope of happy.’ Last year the MFCL was deemed “too big to fail,” and a last minute bailout with a bridge loan to nowhere and a Christmas Eve agreement with our union (UMFCLW) allowed us to deliver the 2008 MFCL. The eleventh-hour bailout was crafted to give you just enough MFCL to stimulate your own Christmas cheer. You - incapable of providing for your own cheer - urgently needed this bailout or your entire holiday would implode.

The stimulus was an overwhelming success. We have concluded, based on nary a single shred of evidence, that our efforts have “created or saved” four million family gatherings. Enjoying the holidays this year? Whether you knew it or not, you owe a fair amount of your abundant cheer this season to the MFCL stimulus. You’re welcome America. However, with Christmas cheer still spiraling downward, it has become apparent that another stimulus letter (and accompanying bailout) is urgently needed, to provide a well-timed cheer boost.

Please understand, the second holiday stimulus is in no way to say the first holiday stimulus was not successful. We have spent your, uh, our money wisely. For example, we have spent millions on a campaign against Santa Clause for perpetuating the image that fat people are more jovial, thus making you feel better about not having grocery money. This is just one example of the hope and change your bailout dollars bring. Please, take a moment to consider how bleak your holiday would be without the 2008 MFCL bailout.

In addition to our spending money as fast as you can make it, the Morrow Family is doing its part to stimulate holiday cheer as well.

Anna loves dresses, gymnastics, bling and telling her brother what to do. His sheep-like predisposition to follow her every whim has earned him the affectionate nickname R-2-Me-Too. Anna is five, although she says she feels like “nine or something.” She started kindergarten this fall and has quickly joined the ranks of the literate. She is creative and says she knows she is an artist because her teacher says artists always have ideas in their head. She said she is almost never without ideas. We’ve noticed she also almost never is without words. Holiday cheer is spread best by big-mouth artists.

Alex is two and is on track to being the guy you’ll one day be glad someone else married. He loves to watch television naked, is a complete momma’s boy, loves all things body function, and uses the word ‘poop’ as often as Tiger Woods breaks his vows. On the plus side, he is potty-trained. Alex is full of life and a lot of fun.

Matt and Rachael are burning through your bailout bucks taking exotic, publically funded trips to both ends of the moral spectrum. We took a family mission trip to teach Bible School on Chicago’s Southside in July; and attended something called VooDooFest in New Orleans in October. In fairness, the latter, was purely by accident. These trips provided some much needed rest from all of our cheer-meistering… you know… so we can be better cheer-meisters. Matt is still heading up the Home Builders Association. His excess weight is disappearing as quickly as evidence of man-made global warming and he shops for new clothes as if he were a teenage girl. He still teaches our Sunday School class, got a new Blackberry and believes he has a genetic disposition for Twitter. Rachael referees two children who pick at each other like Al Franken and Joe Lieberman. She also began leading a ladies’ Bible Study this year. Now, if she could only get to the school bus stop on time...

But the most important thing we have done with your bailout money, is to set up transparency and accountability by establishing an official holiday cheer website: http://morrowfamilychristmasblog.blogspot.com/. You will find back issues of the MFCL (at long last, the fans finally get what they’ve been demanding!), Grandma Morrow’s secret sugar cookie recipe and other merriment. Subscribe to receive future MFCLs via RSS feed or by email subscription so you’ll get yours hours or even days before the “newsstand” version hits snail-mailboxes. The site is designed for you to report what you are doing with your holiday stimulus. Stay in touch, leave comments, report those who are not spreading holiday cheer, or who are otherwise wasting valuable stimulus money. For years to come, 2009 will be remembered as the year the MFCL ‘went viral’ (that is not a reference to the swine flu, although we appreciate that you went there).

However you celebrate, we hope you will remember Christmas is about God’s gracious and merciful gift of Himself in human form, as a child in a manger those 2,000 years ago. It is about God with us. We are so grateful for our dear friends and family, and what better time that Christmas to remind you all how special you are to us. Merry Christmas and God bless you.