Taking the Piss Out of the Christmas Epistle

What is it about this season that obliges people to write these newsletters, these interminable epistles that range from last autumn’s trimming of the hedge to the current nasal health of the (ubiquitous) grandchildren? Why doesn’t Easter or Valentine’s Day cause such an outpouring of well-intentioned pablum? What is it that people wish to convey?
Last year, after similarly decrying these over-written, and over-protested, vignettes of hearth and home, I proposed that the haiku would be a more mercifully terse vehicle for seasonal greetings. That did not meet with universal acceptance.
Granted, the form is difficult; especially for non-Japanese speakers. But I was still somewhat taken back when the earliest of the “long and tedious” began to arrive this season. What, as the Russian said, is to be done? Because something must be done; it is inhuman that otherwise intelligent people be required to write and read these things.
Most of us, it occurs to me, can sketch or doodle a little. Might a tiny rendering of the underlying emotion, such ever as it might be, be sufficient for communication? Certainly the content would not over-challenge the medium. Perhaps a tasteful drawing which encapsulated the “we are well, and we wish you well” sentiment would be ameliorative.
Not to sound artistic, but I see stick figures telling a “Dick and Jane” story line – perhaps in a five-frame cartoon layout. I envision a return to the pithiness and austerity of the haiku; its nugget-sized readability, but without the unconscionably numbing labor of the 5-7-5.
Here then we propose
A tale told plain – Dick and Jane
Not overly verbose: