A lot of people hate Christmas letters. I'm not one of them. I have always enjoyed getting those missives from people I have an interest in, even the ones where most of the news is about family members I don't know. Most of the ones I get serve as a listing of a year in the household's history, and include the major points, both high and low.

The main complaint I hear about these letters is that they don't ever have anything but good news, and seem to be written by a group of braggarts. I must be on the wrong lists, because those are not the ones I get. My friends just chronicle the year.

I didn't do a letter this year, because most of my friends know (courtesy of e-mail) what's been going on in my life and I wasn't in the mood to do a rewrite. But I have done them in years past, especially during the years I was taking care of my mother. It was the simplest way I could think of to let her friends and mine know what was going on, in a time when I didn't have a lot of chances to write to people, and when neither I nor most of my friends had computers in our homes.

Another thing I hear people growling about is an overdose of Christmas music in shopping malls. I agree that some of the music is annoyingly presented (too loud, badly arranged, whatever), but on the whole I enjoy it. I like Christmas music, and don't mind hearing it all month. I have been known to stay around a store to hear the end of a song, even if I wasn't buying anything.

Of course, I'll admit that I have fewer gifts to buy and fewer other reasons to go to local malls, so I don't have to hear the sound systems but maybe once a week. And I do know all too well how bad it can be when you have to suffer through a bad rendition of some song you really like.

So I hope if you have much more shopping to do in stores where the music is getting on your nerves, you make your first purchase a good pair of earplugs.

And about those unwanted letters? One word: recycle!