The Best Christmas Letter We’ve Ever Received

The letter below, penned by my Uncle, John F. Kelly, is hands down the greatest Christmas letter we received this year. And I venture to say, this year’s letter even tops previous years’ letters. It has humor, stabs at not only Santa, but also Global Warming and Al Gore. This is a brave thing to publish such a letter when you consider that the Kelly’s live in the Mecca of Liberalism of the Pacific Northwest - Seattle.

In order to appreciate the humor and warm-heartedness (that’s probably not even a word) of this letter I must give you a little background about the Kelly’s…

1) Lisa (my mother’s sister and my aunt) is a wonderful wife to my uncle John and mother to Jack. Lisa is the baby of my mom’s siblings but she never uses that to her advantage:) Lisa, John and I share a special bond that cannot be broken. At one time or another, we all lived in a damp and dark basement on 49th ave. Lisa and John lived there shortly after being married and I lived there (Lisa and John had moved above ground onto an apartment by this point) when I moved out to Seattle after college. Lisa agrees with me that if we all die from some horrible lung disease, the doctors can trace the pollutants in our lungs back to the same basement where we all once dwelt. Thanks to my Aunt Christie for being a great landlord. Lisa still to this day is on the look out for any mold spores and holds her breath in damp places.

2) My Uncle John is a crazy work-out and health nut. He’s been known to hop on his bike (the kind with pedals not a motor) and ride 100 miles at the end of a day just to blow off some steam. The only fat on his body is probably in his earlobes, but knowing him he has figure out a way to bench press with his ears. He’s also the smartest person in our family. He has like 17 degrees in Business from places like IU and Wabash, he speaks (or at one time did) Japanese (this was a result from working for a company that sold asparagus to Japanese thoroughbred owners….I am not making that up) and recently he worked for World Vision. I am not sure what exactly he did for World Vision but I think it had to do with saving the world by teaching third world nations economics and marketing. All this to say he’s no idiot. Although you could argue that riding 100 miles in or on any type of vehicle for “the fun of it” is stupid. John also suffers from Parkinson’s disease. You would never know it though. He’s an amazing man and I feel selfish and lazy every time I think about how fit and active he is….so I try not to and convince myself that’s his energy is just from all that Seattle coffee.

3 ) Jack (John and Lisa’s son) is the funniest kid I have ever met…well besides my son Ben, but we all know that it just my own bias. Once, while Jack was at school, the kids were having snack time. The teacher asked Jack what he wanted to drink or eat, and Jack responded, “I’ll need to see a menu, please.” That’s the kind of funny Jack is. He doesn’t even try…he’s just funny. Jack is also Autistic. Like his father, you wouldn’t really know he suffers from anything other than being tired from being such an active person. Lisa and John have a thousand stories about Jack and all of them are laugh out loud funny. Jack is a special kid, not because he is Autistic, but because God has blessed John and Lisa with such a wonderful, funny, smart kid.

Katie and I don’t get to visit the Kelly’s as much as we would like, but letters like the one below make them seem a lot closer.

The most important part of the Christmas letter is at the end. John reflects the entire Kelly’s view of Christmas. Although Christmas celebrates the birth a baby in a manger and the giving of gifts as a reflection of the gift God gave the world, Christmas is about God condescending to earth in the form of a man, the perfect man, Jesus Christ. And by doing so, God crushed His only Son to that the world may be saved through Him. Christmas is more than anything about that man being nailed to a cross, dying, and defeating death and Satan’s plan to deceive the world.

I hope you enjoy this letter as much as we did.

UPDATE: Due to a request from the author’s wife, the actual letter has been stored in the KTOWN archives for eternity.