See “Conventions of the holiday letter,” a story on NPR’s “All Things Considered” about those letters that all of us receive (and some of us even write) around this time of year. I had thought for quite some time that someone ought to study these things; Stephen P. Banks apparently did. When asked “what drew your interest to these letters?” he responded “Well, partly because we (referring to his co-researchers) had received holiday letters in our own past, and we found them to be kind of annoying.”
Ain’t that the truth?