How to Create Your Own Holiday Newsletters

The holiday season is drawing nearer and with it comes the card list. You pull out that list of names of high school and college friends, of distant cousins and cousins in distant places, of pediatricians and dentists, and hem and haw over what to write in each of them.

The simplest way to supplement these holiday cards is with a newsletter. For some of the recipients on your list, this may not be the most personal approach to the holidays and for those people you will know what to say instead but for the majority of them a brief newsletter; generally one page, possibly front and back, will satisfy their curiosity and your social obligations. But how do you write a newsletter that will serve for all of your holiday card recipients?

1. Start with a holiday themed stationery. You can make your own fairly simply with a rubber stamp. Select a holiday stamp that reflects your personality, or the impression you are wanting to make with your letter. For a fun, whimsical feel, perhaps you will want to choose a stamp with cartoon mice singing carols or a snowman. For a more formal feel holly leaves and berries, or snowflakes decorated in fine glitter or silver embossing powder may be more what you are looking for. If you want to make stationery with a border look for a rolling stamp. There are many options for making your own stationery using the rubber stamp method. Just use your imagination.

2. Decide how you want to create your newsletter. There aren't quite as many options here. You can handwrite one letter and make photocopies, either onto your stationery or design your stationery after you have made the copies.

Another option is to use a word processor to type out your newsletter then print it onto the stationery. This may be a more desirable option if you have a lot to say and extra large handwriting (which is always my biggest problem) or if your handwriting is less than legible. A step up in the technical world would offer a desktop publishing program with which you can add photos and clip art to your newsletter. This option is more suited to the more computer savvy, however, most desktop publishing or graphics programs today are designed so that anyone can figure out how to do a simple project, such as a holiday newsletter.

3. Outline what you are going to say. Since, in most cases, you are trying to scrunch a year's worth of news into a thousand words or fewer, creating an outline of the most important points may help with this step. Of course the larger your family, the less room you will have to talk about each of them, but let's look at the average family with two kids and two pets (because everyone enjoys pet-related anecdotes). Write down the names of everyone in the family (including the pets) and, next to each name, write one thing that happened during the year to that person. Then, go back and write a second thing, in case you have more room after writing about the first events. These can be such things as Johnny started high school in August or Susie got engaged in June and the wedding is scheduled for May. Anything noteworthy.

4. Start writing. Begin with the standard pleasantries. Since this will be going out to all of your friends and family members, the introductory paragraph will be fairly generic: "Seasons Greetings from the Jones family. We hope that this year has treated you all well and that this letter finds you all in good health." Where you may ask about family matters or work or school in a individualized, personal letter to one friend, these questions may not apply to all of the people on your holiday card list. Besides, the point of a holiday newsletter is to talk about yourself and chances are that most of the people on your list will be sending out equally generic letters about themselves and their families.

Once you have gotten introductions out of the way, look at your outline. Each person (or pet) in your family should get a paragraph minimum about each event you outlined. Johnny started high school, fantastic. Is he enjoying it? Is he involved in any clubs or sports? Are his old friends in the same school and if not is he making new ones? What about Susie's engagement? Are there any details of the impending wedding she would let you share in the newsletter? Tell everyone about her fiancé. What does he do? Do you like him (if not, maybe now isn't the time to share that information with everyone on your mailing list)?

5. Mail the letters. A nice touch, especially if you created your own stationery, is to decorate the envelopes to match the letters. Now, address the envelopes, drop them in the mail and let the postal service do the rest. Your holiday correspondence is taken care of for one more year.