..................I hope it isn't, but, if it is, please feel free to copy and adapt:
Dear ......................
I was delighted to hear from you. So much so that I simply could not allow yet another month to slip by without letting you know just how elated I was to receive your Christmas card along with its usual entertaining enclosure.
Truly, you card was of such remarkable ostentation that even you must have felt somewhat overawed by the realisation that you had surpassed your previous standards; the 'Happy Yuletide', which the printer had so artistically created for you in large gold lettering just below the 'winter' photograph of your house (and may I say how realistic I felt the artificial snow to be?), being itself almost eclipsed by his rendition of your signature in silver - or was it platinum? The whole speaking so eloquently of your enduring notions of taste!
But, most of all, I was truly thrilled to read your annual newsletter in which you gave your customary and most admirably detailed account not only of your latest acquisitions, achievements and exotic holidays, but also heartening news of your ever-burgeoning prosperity and vastly increased circle of inimate friends and influential contacts (none of whose names I recall reading in your bulletins of previous years).
Last, but certainly not least, I must tell you how flattered I am that in a letter so necessarily dominated by news of the many successes of your important life, you found space to mention me not only in the first line, but also in the last!
Eagerly looking forward to your next sending,
With equally sincere good wishes,
............
