I can smugly say that I am now done my Christmas shopping. This year is shaping up to be a very calm one. I've been struggling with the idea of penning another Christmas Times. The Christmas Times is, of course, the precursor to my vanity personal home page and the concept of blogging for me.

When Jenn and I first married, I found that writing a brief note in a Christmas card (trying to be informative, personal and entertaining) and sending this out just was not going to cut it for me. I needed more elbow room to express all that had been going on through the year. So, back in 1990, the year after we were married, I wrote a one page, double-sided note detailing how things had gone for us over the past year. I made copies enough for all our relatives and friends, folded them up and stuffed them into a Christmas card that was just signed, without the traditional quick sentence echoing the sentiment printed in the card. Wouldn't you know it - I got a pile of positive feedback. So next year I did it again, only by 1991, I had discovered Ventura Publisher 1.1, the first of the IBM desktop publishing programs. Things started to get a little jazzier, with clip art and even a photocopied picture of the family (just Jenn, Banana and I) on the back. From there, it just got to be a habit.

I managed to publish a Christmas newsletter every year until 1998. This was the year that Jenn and I spent a few months apart. It was a hard year emotionally on us both. We were able to work out our differences and come together as a family again by September, but when it came time to write the Christmas Times, I didn't have the emotional strength to put it together. Besides, how would I recap a year that was almost the end of our family? I couldn't gloss the event over and I just wasn't ready to talk about it.

After that year (1998), I just fell out of practice with my little newsletter. I even started one in 1999, but couldn't think of how to nicely put an explanation of the previous year's missing newsletter.

In 2000, I watched a colleague at work start to keep a blog and I was fascinated. I started blogging myself a few months later. This has been my outlet for the stories, quotes, rants and raves that I try to fill my Christmas newsletter with. I find blogging to be better, as you get the day-at-a-time view rather than have me try to remember and eloquently sum it up over a few holiday season late nights.

Finally, I think I'm ready to get back into the practice of producing a Christmas Times. Brianna has offered to help and I have a good, meaty year's worth of blogging material to draw from. I also have new technical skills and resources (scanner, digital camera, color printer access) to assist with the production. I am going to tackle it as a between-Christmas-and-New-Years project.

I'll let you know when it's finished.