The 2013 Scallion!

It's here—the 2013 Scallion!

You can find it here:

2013 Scallion

Merry Christmas, everybody!

History of The Scallion, Part 9: The Rest of the Scallions (2007–2012)

2007. Another holiday season looming. Another Christmas letter hanging over our heads. We'd never repeated ourselves up to that point, but we'd never received so many compliments before. And we are nothing if not slaves to compliments. We measure our self-worth in Facebook Likes.

So we decided to do another Scallion.

What was fun about the second Scallion was that we added a few inside jokes—not enough to alienate most readers, but enough to make a few readers have an extra chuckle. I added my favorite design element—a starburst—just because I knew it would make my designer friends cringe. We started changing up the footers. (Admit it—you didn't even know there were footers.) AND we added pictures. I feel like the pictures—and their captions—are an essential element of The Scallion.

2007 Scallion

So what to do in 2008? Why The Scallion, of course.

2008 Scallion

And yet. Something was still nagging at us. Could we really just do one kind of Christmas letter for the rest of our lives? NO! Thus was born The Shallot.

2009 Scallion

But in the end, we had to go with The Scallion. If you're a loyal—and eagle-eyed—reader, you'll notice that we often repeat motifs. For example, in 2010, we posted a picture of a turtle drawing with the caption "Not the turtle we saw." In 2011, we posted a picture of our niece Margeaux (who is in medical school) looking down Vic's throat with the caption "Not the doctor we saw." In 2012, we'd visited a lot of zoos, and one of the photos is of our grandson Jerrod. His caption? "Not one of the animals we saw." Will that continue in 2013? I know, because draft 1 is complete. You'll find out in a little over a week.

Here are the last three Scallions. The next time I update this blog, it will be to unveil the 2013 Scallion!

2010 Scallion
2011 Scallion
2012 Scallion

I want to thank all our loyal readers (whether for one year, all 14 or somewhere in between) who let us know how much they enjoy and anticipate The Scallion. We do it for your adoration you.

History of The Scallion, Part 8: Birth of The Scallion!

It's finally here. The very first Scallion.

As usual, we were trying to figure out how to not make our dull lives bore the crap out of readers. Somehow we came upon the idea of writing our year in the style of The Onion. So we put our heads together and came up with some story ideas. Then I put my journalism degree to work and wrote a few "news" stories and put my Word skills to the test and designed something that looked like a newspaper. But what to call it?

We had been listening to Christmas music. We love Christmas music (during the Christmas season—we do not love Christmas music starting in October). I have a Dr. Demento Christmas CD. I love Dr. Demento. One of our favorite tracks on that CD is called "Christmas Dragnet" by Stan Freberg. Stan Freberg is awesome. And one of the lines from that track goes like this:

Frank: The missus always fixes a plate of relish with them little carrot sticks. Y'know, olives, pickles, scallions ... Most folks call 'em "green onions," but they're really scallions. Have you ever noticed that, Joe?

And thus was born The Scallion. If you were of a certain age and had really sharp eyes, you'd have seen that line in the footer of the first issue—and understood it.

So now we have a name, we have a format and we have news stories. You know what we don't have? Clever. Witty. Funny. We have comical. Laughable. Mediocre. And not in a good way.

So I give it to Vic. With the replacement of a word here, the suggestion of a new headline there, and the addition of the best quotes and zingers, now we have The Scallion that you all know and—dare I say it?—love.

We sent The Scallion out mid-December, and by Christmas, the reviews were in: The Scallion was a hit.

Read the very first Scallion here:

2006 Scallion

And if you're interested, listen to the entire Christmas Dragnet here:

Christmas Dragnet

History of The Scallion, Part 7

This is one of my favorite Christmas letters ever. The first paragraph tells the story, so I'll just leave it at that.

2005 Holiday Letter

History of The Scallion, Part 6

The 2003 Christmas letter was a hard one to top. We were strongly considering adapting a poem, and we wanted it to be The Raven. We worked on it for literally minutes, and when we realized that all we could come up with was the first line—and we were basically not going to change that line at all—we decided we'd better try something else. I, of course, suggested haiku, but we had just done that in 2002, and how can you fill up a whole letter in haiku anyway?

Suddenly, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas came into my head, and before I knew it, the letter had practically written itself.

Here it is.

2004 Holiday Letter

History of The Scallion, Part 5

OMG! This is really one of our best holiday letters ever! (What, I'm devoting a whole blog to The Scallion and you still think I'm humble?)

First of all, this is the first truly collaborative effort with Vic. His fingerprints are all over this, and we had the best time writing it.

I'm not going to say anything more about it—the letter speaks for itself, and I still have laundry to do.

But (surely you didn't think I could truly end a blog post after three paragraphs) I will say one thing: Not a lot of people put the word "poop" in their holiday letters. We are truly one of a kind. Or two of a kind? Peas in a pod? But not peas, because who likes peas? (And you pea lovers out there—I don't want to hear your defense of peas.) I'm sure you can come up with the reason we put "poop" in our holiday letter.

OK, one more thing (I swear, this is the last): There really was a toilet on the front porch of one of the townhomes we lived in. And that's why we decided to move.

2003 Holiday Letter

History of The Scallion, Part 4

2002: The Christmas Quiz.

I think this was the point that I started realizing a Christmas letter was really a horrible idea because ... that's right ... WE NEVER DO ANYTHING.

Sorry for the shouting.

But 2002 was a watershed year for The Scallion (even though it's not The Scallion yet): I recognize Vic's voice for the first time. I can still identify some of the things he said, even though it's been more than 10 years.

I also notice that my lifelong love for haiku is expressed for the first time in this letter. I am still trying to put haiku into everything I do. In fact, that's how I'll end this post:

When The Scallion is
not yet The Scallion, does it
still exist? Who knows?

2002 Holiday Letter

I am blazing through this! I'll be up-to-date in no time! ;-)

History of The Scallion, Part 3

Well, crap. I kind of thought I'd have completed the history of The Scallion by now, given that it's almost time for a new edition. But alas, I have not. So let's see how many Scallions I can get through today.

We're up to the 2001. Fudge. (Or as Ralphie would say, "Fuuuuuuuuuuuudge." Only not that.) It's not even The Scallion yet! I have a long way to go. Let's dive in.

2001, the year of the "I'm not writing a holiday letter" holiday letter. It was a tricky year. We were in New York City three days before 9/11—drove right by the towers, in fact, gleaming at sunset—and were supposed to leave Philadelphia on 9/11. So that has to be in the letter somehow, but really, I'm going to be the one to ruin Christmas with my downer of a holiday letter? I think not.

I think I ended up with a pretty good letter (and at this point, it's still my letter—Vic is not helping yet), and I really feel like I was starting to find a Scallion voice.

What do you think?

2001 Holiday Letter

History of The Scallion, Part 2

When last we met, it was 1999. We had just finished our first holiday letter. It was boring and time-consuming. And yet ...

... the critics loved it. Of course, the critics were our friends and family, so what else were they going to say?

At any rate, we needed to top the previous year's letter, but how? We spent the first half of the year ... not doing anything. (See "Holiday Letter 1999.") And we did a few things in the last half of the year, but not enough to fill up a newsletter. So we just added a bunch of filler and sent it off.

What's interesting about this letter (and all of the letters, really), is what I remember while I'm rereading them to write these blog entries.

For example, in this letter, I reference Maermal, the patron saint of patience. I cringe at the reference now because it seems so contrived. But it also reminds me how new the Internet was even in 2000. People were really just starting to use Google, and I remember being so impressed by how quickly it returned results that I mentioned how it only took me 0.69 seconds to find that information. I wondered how long it would take to find the same information today, so I Googled "patron saint of patience." This time, my results were returned in 0.21 seconds. So impressive! Except for one thing. This time, Google said the patron saint of patience was St. Monica. I guess Google and I have gotten better with age.

I also use the phrase "plucky comic relief." This tells me that this letter was written sometime shortly after the movie Galaxy Quest came out, which uses that same phrase.

All in all, I'm not sure this is a better letter than the first one, but I do like the way it ends. So without further ado:

2000 Holiday Letter

See you next time!

History of The Scallion: Part 1

I love Christmas cards. I like sending them. I like receiving them. I have a lot of family. I have a lot of friends. I send out a lot of Christmas cards, and I have been doing it since what seems like the dawn of time (but hasn't really).

It has been since the dawn of computers, however, so for years, we did everything by hand: the address on the front, the return address, the signature. This wouldn't have been so bad—even for a lot of cards—but I also liked writing a little something in each card. Mostly it was just something about our year, and let's face it, we don't do a lot, so it wasn't a lot of writing, but over the course of 50 to 75 cards, it adds up. Now, if we saw the person in the preceding year, I might put in an additional tidbit about that person. I also looked at the previous year's Christmas cards (because yes, I keep them), and when people would write something to me, I would respond to their comments. (How is your mom? Did you get the basement fixed up? I hope your dog isn't still chewing your slippers.)

As you can imagine, this ended up taking a lot of time. And every year, there would be a few more cards to write so it would take even longer. So I began to dread this chore—the destination of which I loved (Christmas cards sent), but the journey of which I did not.

As technology improved, we automated it a little—we used preprinted return address labels, for example. But we resisted the idea of printing mailing labels and having the cards preprinted with our signature (I mean, come on, "Love, Loves" is much cuter when it is handwritten), so we still weren't saving a lot of time.

Over the years, we got our share of holiday letters. (Aside #1: Don't get all up in my grill because I call them holiday letters—we celebrate Christmas, but not all of our friends do. To avoid calling them Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus/Solstice letters, I'm using the generic "holiday.") And we resisted the urge to produce one ourselves for a long time. Let's face it: they're not all good, and we didn't want to end up on the trash heap. But the idea kept swimming around in the back of my head. So we talked about it and decided that if we made it kind of funny and short (no more than one page), maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

Fast forward to Thanksgiving 1999. I sat down at my trusty, state-of-the-art IBM PS/2 to start typing our first holiday letter. (Aside #2: Our IBM PS/2 had a 20 MB hard drive and a 1200 baud modem. I used WordPerfect to type the letter and an Epson dot matrix printer to print it out. And then we went to a copier center to make copies. Young people: You will not know what any of this means. I might as well tell you we played records while we wrote our holiday letter. Old people: You can continue reading when you stop laughing.)

Anyway, I was staring at a blank screen and couldn't think of anything to write. I asked Vic, "Do you remember anything we did this year?" And he said, "Well, in January ...," and thus a holiday letter was born.

1999 Holiday Letter

The letter was ready to go, lickety-split. Yet I couldn't help thinking it was still a little impersonal. So I decided to write a little personal message on the back of every letter. "How long can that take?" I thought. Well let me tell you, it took a L-O-N-G time.

And that's where our next blog post will pick up.

(Aside #3: Don't judge any typos you find in this letter. I wasn't working as an editor then, I had a 1200 baud modem so my it would have taken an hour just to look up how to spell "Kwanzaa," and I'm too lazy to proofread and correct them now. OK, you can judge me for being lazy.)

The Scallion blog

I know what you're thinking: "Why a Scallion blog? These people are pretentious enough during the holidays—must we endure them year-round?"
 
To that I reply, "OF COURSE YOU MUST!" ß (Please note the use of all caps and an exclamation point. Clearly this did not go through editing.)

Seriously, though, every year, several things happen:

• People ask for more, and it goes to our heads.
• We leave a lot out of The Scallion that we know would make people laugh. (See first bullet.)
• Someone new comes to The Scallion, and we feel obliged to give him or her the history—because who wouldn't want to know where The Scallion came from? (See first bullet.)

So today I started (yes, another) blog. This one will be devoted to all things Scallion. In the coming weeks, watch for posts about the evolution of The Scallion and about things we've already discarded for Scallion 2013.

For now, I'll leave you with what Wags thinks about the blog. Yes, it's very similar to what she thinks about kayaking. OK, it's identical to what she thinks about kayaking. I only have so many pictures, you know.