Christmas Letters from Hell | Michael Lent | Talks at Google

I grew up in New England and it was pretty much a federal crime there to actually talk about yourself. So we didn't actually send out letters at all because we would have nothing to say. So my first exposure to holiday letters when I was in grad school when I worked for the on campus public relations department. And one day my boss came with a diskette and said, there's a spreadsheet on here and it has all the events of the past year of our family. Could you craft it into a holiday letter that could go out to 400 of our closest friends and family? I was thinking that maybe that might be a little out of my job describe. But I was still of the, you know, this was before my can don't spirit had middays. And so I said, I'll give it a try. And about a day later she came back and she said, well, you know, technically you did everything I said, but could you kind of spice it up and don't be afraid to embellish. And so now I'm in really kind of a little bit irked. And I did two versions of the letter and one was slightly embellishing and the other one, she had a daughter that was taking tap dancing, I guess, and I changed that to tap dancing was now a spectator sport at the Olympics and she was going to represent the United States. And then the obligatory family vacation odyssey went from, I think it was Lake Sunapee, which was in New Hampshire. And they became the first family to scale Mount Everest with a child in a Bjorn. If you see where this is going, she sent this letter out to the 400 closest friends and family. And she had a pretty good sense of humor because I kept my job.

And.

I have a feeling as I started to write this book that, you know, I was thinking about it that, you know, she probably went back to the same, you know, letter with growth chart and all that sort of thing that we come to, you know, know and expect and love to hate and. But I think that probably the people that receive it, they go, yeah, but what about that really cool letter from a while ago and you know, how's it going with the Olympics? One thing that is clear to me is that these so called letters are really not letters at all. They're forays into a sort of like junior high school journalism. They're sort of shareholder reports to friends and family, anybody that has bought stock into your life. And the problem with them is that they one, they sort of fall into three categories and if you're really low to the Person that gets sort of a perfect storm of the three elements. The first element is the braggarts trip to bountiful and that's where the nine year old has already been accepted to Harvard and we're just really proud of him. And they just sort of leap from accomplishment to accomplishment. It also includes new things like cars and boats and repossessions that they've acquired over the year. Most of us don't have lives like that but it's nice to read about people that do brought up the new 6 Series BMW are on their way to Harvard. The second one is we're all in this together and that's as you saw from some of the legislator is where you are asked do you remember Mr. Peters who lived down the street? Yeah, I think you met him when you were nine. You know he's got angina or he's got shingles. He's got, you know and there's really not much you can do with it in the realm of a little too much information again it's going out to all different people. We once received and this is the term you can ask my wife for Christmas a Christmas letter and included photographic evidence of the birth of their child in the room you really felt like you were there. It's the holidays and yes I do celebrate the birth of baby Jesus but I really don't want to see the birth of baby Justin. Just play that way. I'll check in on him when he's three months old. Everybody's kind of recuperated a little bit. The third one is kind of an odd one and that's where you know, let's say you didn't send a fetus to Harvard or something like that. And I call that touch by greatness. And we received one once where the people said halfway through guess what happened to us in the August we were standing in line buying our groceries and who was in front of us buying a tomato? Joe Pesci. Joe Pesci. And so you know, Gordon gave said a line from Goodfellas and you know, so on and so on they went on. At the end of the letter it said P.S. we learned later that really wasn't Joe Pesci but it's still a good story. And then Touched by Greatness is where you almost achieve something that's almost worthy of talking about. And like I said if you A few years ago we actually had a perfect storm of those and in the first paragraph there was a mention of a two legged dog, a Winnebago caught in a Windstorm and somebody getting over, I think sciatica.

Well.

I think, you know, the sort of. The secret of these letters is really not to take yourself too seriously. I think that people are excited about you, otherwise we wouldn't be your friends. But if, you know, this becomes kind of the wonder of me kind of letter, then people will start to secretly have some doubts about how nice you really are and maybe suspect that you're a serial killer or something like that. The other kind of off putting thing is a letter that is totally devoted to somebody's religious epiphany. We were just actually on the drive up here talking about that and somebody has kind of either a religious conversion, whatever. Again, it's, it's a wonderful thing and sharing it. But you know, three pages of that really kind of put you out of the box. Does anybody have any questions? Usually people ask me, like what are some of my favorite letters? There's a letter from global warming. I like the Lucifer family. I also think that I've done a sort of a public Service. There's a Lettermanic 3000. It if you're trying to sort of get over some touchy points. How to talk about somebody's probation or somebody falling off the wagon or something embarrassing like that, somebody's stint in rehab. This deals with it very, very nicely. And you could just insert your name into the fill in the blanks and you have a very nice letter to the.

How many of these are based off.

Actual personal experiences either between you and your wife or letters that you see here?

Are they pretty much all just big embellishments of letters that or how much.

Of these are just completely creatively we started and a lot of people probably again they are letters that you love to hate. And in our case there was one particular year where we just divvied them up around the dining room table and we kind of read excerpts and then like voted which one we thought was the best. You know, the funny ones are not so funny and the unintentionally. The other ones that are unintentionally funny are very hilarious. So that was kind of the impetus was, you know, we're taking. But you know the nice thing is that people, you could actually put people in there and exercise and they won't see themselves generally. But then we kind of, you know, there's a. The holiday letter from the Amish, for example, and Christopher Columbus as one of the ships where it was going down. He wrote to Queen Isabel and given him leggings and a mug. World's greatest explorer. And here he is, you know, three ships of treasure rifled from the New World. And he's thanking him for the wooden leggings, which were really exciting. Even the bombs.

Have people started sending you letters that they've received since the book has been published?

Yes, we do receive some of those and threats. And then also the other thing is people keep saying, where's your Hollywood? Because usually what we do is we do a family photo and we try to find one that sort of catches the spirit of the family. So we have this kind of goofy shot of ourselves in the North Shore of the way we were in August and it's very windy and my hair is going like this all over the place. And that's the photo, you know, because it's casual and so on. And what we'll do is we'll write something on the back that's kind of customized. But we don't do a holiday letter. But people keep saying like, yeah Mr. Big, where's your letter? So we have some copies here and I'm happy to sign them for you. I did write prey Origin of the Species from Marvel Comics that came out in May. And the whole idea of that book was to set it up as a movie. And we were in the process of negotiating that when the strike happened. So I know I'm in your prayers as you see on the news footage of people standing in picket lines for a speedy end just so that we can get a comic book into a movie that's working hard on that.

Yes, I just asked when you knew you had enough for a book about this topic. And also do you see any follow ups because like you asked, you might receive the letters from Being Bold.

Yes, we're hoping that there's a follow up edition and I hope that my publisher tells me that we can go ahead with that in a few weeks and probably much like a lot of yourselves, I knew I had enough books when it was due at like 6 o' clock new York time. And the following day I still hadn't sent it in. So I'm like, I think I have enough. It's interesting when you put something like this together because it has to clear of the legal department. So I found myself at 7 Schuster Laws legal department is in Washington D.C. and I had found myself in a conference call with the lawyers going through some of these wacky letters and you really can't say that about him. But overall wonderful process and they, you know, educates the they negotiated quite a lot and it was, you know, as you probably. Again, many of you probably sort of feel like, I can't believe I'm getting paid for this. It was really fun to come up with the whack. A moles writing the holiday letter. Do you guys write a holiday letter? Wow. I do. We do that. We do the photo, and then we write something on the back. But at this point, I would be terrified. I think that, you know, if you just, like, make it up as if it's not about you and, you know, that sort of thing, and you just make up random events and stuff, no one's really going to know. No one's going to hold you to it.

Is there such a thing as a tasteful letter that you've seen, or do.

They all come across as somewhat cheesy? Yeah, I think it's like when you sort of just give the flavor. Like, you know, let's say. You know, let's say we're friends and we haven't seen each other since, you know, undergrad or something like that. And you. We suddenly on the street, it'd be like, hey, how are you doing? And what about this and what about that? You wouldn't just, like, just launch off with a list of accomplishments and then go, and guess what, Michael? I got the say. I had to keep going. We don't know what to do. I think I might have to get pushed down, you know, so you just got to keep it breezy and like, oh, yeah, yeah, I married her. Yeah, I believe it. You know, that sort of thing. And I think that that's the tone when it's kind of light and breezy and just gives a taste. You know, again, we include pictures of the. We have two small children now, and people like, they like that. But then when you have, like, a flow chart and a pie chart, you know, I've seen, you know, Timmy has grown 7 inches and 47 pounds. You know, what are people supposed to do with that information? Wow. Time marches on.

What do you think? I want to phrase this delicately, but what do you think about the letters in this region? Region? Like in Southern California and the entertainment industry. Is there anything different about people in your industry compared to other letters that you came from?

Well, we are a little less inclined to write the letters. They seem to be kind of a really. Kind of a Midwest and maybe southeast coast kind of preoccupation. I said, like, I grew up in very kind of puritan culture, and it would just be considered bragging no matter what. You could say, you know, I've had the flu for the last three weeks are this letter's late. And they'd be like, going, are they, you know, trying to impress you? Three weeks flu. Wouldn't that kill you? Why did you write that letter? So, you know, in Southern California, we're so used to talking about ourselves every day. Christmas is just another day, you know, that sort of thing. Whereas there really is a. Actually, that's a good point. I knew of someone who would. The mom. It was her job. And somewhere around mid October, she would dole out pads of paper and pens and say, okay, you're responsible for Kirby's corner of the newsletter or something like that. And of course, most people wouldn't do anything. And she would wind up writing it herself, you know, like the hour before she goes to the post office or whatever. But she really gave the valiant effort and so on. And that's a lot of times what happens. Like I said, it's not so much a letter as a form of recording recipients. Yes. When you think about different.

Different types of letters with the new.

Technology, like, I've seen people send DVD letters. It makes it a little bit more personal. And as you know, reading is dead and stubborn. Except for my book, which, in a time capsule a thousand years from now, people will be like, Shakespeare, I. You know, anything. That's novelty. Again, just kind of keeping it brief. Like, you know, I received one of those, and that's had, you know, let's say, a ski. Excerpts from a ski trip. And you're looking at, you know, 20 minutes of footage of people staying, you know, badly lit and, you know, that sort of thing. They've got hot cocoa there. Let's go. You know, again, just the flavor of it is enough. Cool. So I can sign books, you can have me sign them to other people, and you gift them. There are no bad decisions.