The Baron Bugle

The process of creating our annual holiday newsletter is time-consuming and arduous. And because it helps us forge a memorable connection with friends, it's worth every bit of the effort.

We’re in the thick of the holiday season: plenty of Christmas music, online shopping, nightly readings of The Advent Book…and punctual completion of our annual holiday greeting to family and friends—The Baron Bugle.

OK, so “punctual” is relative.

It’ll be dispatched in the next few days, which is nearly a week earlier than last year.

Yes, it was Christmas Eve 2022 when we mailed our previous year-in-review (complete with masthead, headlines, photos and narrative on a double-sided 8 ½-by-11-inch paper). That was a bit later than the prior two years, when we no longer settled for a simple written update and/or a family photo and began this whole Baron Bugle mock publication business.

To set the scene of how this ambitious (crazy?) undertaking started, think back to December 2020.

It was nine months into the COVID pandemic—roughly 8 ½ months after the “two weeks to flatten the curve” kickoff to this fraught era. Unless you’ve repressed any and all memory of that grueling year (not a bad idea), you might recall this as an especially difficult time.

The vaccine was on the verge of being rolled out, and folks were hanging on by a thread as 2020’s final month arrived. So, how was December 2020 for you?

Without delving into all the details, that period was, far and away, the most traumatic time of my life. My mom passing away on Christmas Eve (and not being able to be with her, in light of COVID restrictions) gives only a glimmer of its horribleness.

In addition to my Christian faith, a big part of my therapy to soldier through that month was expanding our list of holiday-greeting recipients. Each household, each address, each stamp that I affixed, and each envelope that I dropped into the mailbox was reaffirmation that, despite those who had disappointed me, there were many genuine friends in our lives.

Each year since, Bridgett and I talk about how nice it would be if we could get it all done and in the mail by early December. And each year, life finds new and creative ways of getting in the way.

Now’s not the time to go into the latest time-consuming roadblock—the metaphor is apt, given what happened 10 days ago—other than to declare that we have an absolutely legitimate “hall pass” for pressing up so close to Christmas with the final stages of this year’s Baron Bugle publication.

Although we are almost certain to get delayed, we’ve not yet been denied. Buoyed by our friends’ enthusiastic response to the Bugle, we press ahead with a clearly defined division of labor: I am in charge of the writing and Bridgett is in charge of the design.

On a more granular level, here’s roughly how it goes—instead of the 12 Days of Christmas, these are the 12 Steps of Baron Bugle Birthing:

1.      Reflect on some of the most notable occurrences from the year.

2.      Sift through hundreds of photos, drawn mostly from our smartphones.

3.      See where step 1 and step 2 overlap and choose a preliminary pool of 25 to 35 photos.

4.      Agonize over which 15-odd photos make the final cut, careful to include a balance of all four family members as well as Alvin, our recently deceased cat (who still makes the cut this year).

5.      I write captions to go with these first-team photos.

6.      As she lays out the two-page document, Bridgett realizes that a few photos shouldn’t have made the cut for one reason or another.¹

7.      Bridgett revives a few photos that had seemed destined for the cutting-room floor.

8.      Whoops! I’ve written the captions too long: time to trim, nip, tuck and otherwise make the words fit—hence the self-effacing (and absolutely accurate) tagline that appears on the right side of the masthead: “Some of the Family News, Print to Fit” (which is a spin on The New York Times’ “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”)

9.      Various formatting issues crop up and, one by one, Bridgett wrangles them into submission.

10.   Print anywhere from 150 to 200 copies (unless it’s 2020, in which case this figure soars to roughly 300).

11.   Address, stuff, seal and stamp envelopes.

12.   Haul The Baron Bugle-infused envelopes to the post office.²

Whew!

If I’ve made it sound like a lot of work, then that’s because it absolutely is.

But in an era of easy technological outreach, where a text or e-mail is a simple keystroke away, making the effort to make an old-fashioned connection is its own reward.

1. Bridgett also puts the kibosh on really goofy ideas. To wit: my original 2020 conception of a “Sheltering-in-Plates” theme with a photo of me buried under a bunch of dinner plates—sounds like “sheltering in place,” get it?

2. This year, thanks to the overlap of top events, photos and this Substack column, we are also providing links to various columns, such as our trip to Italy, Maggie Rose’s buzz-cut and our car purchase.