The first holiday card of the year arrived yesterday — a Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah combo from an old friend — bearing not even so much as a handwritten signature.

I wanted more:  How and what is my friend doing these days? How old are those cute kids in the photo and what are they up to? 

I wasn’t expecting a robust personal letter — this is a very busy month during very busy times — but, yeah, I would have really enjoyed one of those often-criticized ritually reviled photocopied holiday letters containing short, usually sunny updates on each member of the family.

Who cares about this information? Well, the recipient, presumably.  If someone doesn’t care enough about you and your family to spend 30 seconds of reading time catching up on the year’s doings, then you have no business sending that person a card and should cut that person from your address book. 

And if you, the recipient, don’t care enough about the person who’s sent you a greeting to spend 30 seconds of reading time catching up with him or her, then toss out the card unopened as soon as you see the return address.

Critics say such letters are boring and self-important. They’re “little packages of braggadocio and bathos,” in the contemptuous opinion of a Slate columnist who wrote about this topic in 1999. “The bottom line is that nobody really gives a rat’s patooty whether the writer has had a near-death experience or a promotion.”

The strange thing to me is that many who feel this way–who find tedious and irritating even a cursory update on recent events in the lives of people they actually know–are the same people who are eager readers of People, the National Enquirer and newspaper gossip columns, which specialize in offering up trivial details about the lives of movie and TV stars whom the reader has never met and will likely never meet.

Jon’s vacationing in Hawaii? Do tell! A former neighbor got a nice promotion and his eldest graduated from Princeton?  Yawn.

Not me. I give numerous patooties of rodents of all varieties about the promotions and near-death experiences of my far-flung pals and their families.  I fear the no-patooty crowd has gotten to my friend and many other people, and  that to avoid their inevitable scorn they  , have adopted the less-is-more philosophy of holiday greetings that results in this nearly meaningless holiday minimalism.

Since when has it been impolite or vain to share with acquaintances the major events in your life? Whatever you would tell an old friend during a chance encounter, tell all your old friends in a letter. And those you think no longer care . . . scratch them off your list.

The form letter is by far my favorite form of holiday greeting to receive, though for in-town friends I talk to at least occasionally, the exchange of simple cards (family photos preferred) is perfect — a pleasant, symbolic reminder of our connection.

Holiday form letters from distant, old friends….(answers)