Christmas letters -- please don't bother

Over the years, I’ve gotten a few mass-produced Christmas letters that were fun to read, from people I lost touch with and enjoyed hearing from. Today we got one from relatives in Colorado. (Hubby’s side, not mine.)

These are the same folks who, when we visited them a few years ago, spent 15 minutes showing us the sights around Colorado Springs (whoosh! was that the Garden of the Gods?), then trapped us for three hours in the food donation center they manage, so we could see firsthand the wonderful work they do for the Lord.

Hot, smelly, flies everywhere. The place wasn’t even open – they just walked around giving orders to volunteers to clean the place up, all the while picking out the best stuff to take home for themselves.

To Richard and Beverly:

So here’s your Christmas letter – a solid page (8 point font) with God’s grace mentioned in every paragraph, all about your new jobs (you have new jobs every year, it seems), and about all the people who have come to Christ through your witnessing. (When they see you coming, they put up their hands and say “I’m saved”, don’t they?)

Here’s a clue. We don’t care about the Christian men your daughter is dating, or how the construction cost for the new food bank was twice as much as the original estimate (you have a new deck? how interesting).

No wonder your frail grandma came to live with you but miraculously managed to feel well enough to find a place of her own after just two weeks. Yep, it’s a miracle all right.

Jerks. Save the stamp next year. That’s what you can save. The stamp.

Here, here, AuntiePam! I always try to make our Christmas letters somewhat entertaining (last year’s was written as a letter to stockholders. This year’s will be a press release.) and I always go light on detail. After all, if you cared about the nitty-gritty in our lives, you’d have called and we’d have told you about it. Instead, you get all of your info about us in the Xmas letter.

I get letters like the one you described here every year. Look, people, the letter came on nativity-themed printer paper. It was stuffed in a glory-to-god card. The card was in an envelope mailed with a Virgin Mary stamp. We know that you are Christians. Lay off the egregious god/christ references in the letter already. A simple

is okay if that’s your thing, but I don’t need to know that god helped Jenny get her braces off a month early, okay?

Did my dad’s wife send their letter to you instead of me this year???

Could be, Opal. I’d offer to send it on to you, but it’s covered with coffee grounds.

I wouldn’t mind reading your letter, Juniper – care to add a stranger to your list?

I confess I just composed a holiday letter, but I swear it was just a newsy update for the folks who didn’t get the whole story of our recent move. (And a short brag on my daughter.) I’ve already told hubby and daughter that we’re going to sit in front of the 'puter cam and make a pic that I can attach to the letter before I send it on its way. But I swear, it’s not one of those obnoxious boasting ain’t-we-great-warm-n-fuzzy letters, nor do I preach or whine… really!!
<sigh>
ho ho ho, y’all :smiley:

My favorite holiday leter comes on Valentine’s Day. Her last name was Valentine, his was Day… had to be hyphenated.

My family’s letter? We each get a paragraph. Hopefully filled with nothing too embarassing. (Dad writes it…sigh.) About the only mention you get of my family’s faith is stuff we do with the church. (“Becca has been doing some wonderful work with her voice teacher and was the soloist at church one Sunday!”)

I’m all for glorifying God in your daily life, but that should be your life, not your glory.

Oh, Jeez, Christmas letters. My Dad started doing this about ten years ago:rolleyes:. Every year, about this time, he starts pestering the kids for updates.

“Well gee, Dad, let’s see, my companion of more than ten years dumped me for a Swiss artist and just had a baby by him. I gained about twenty pounds in the past six months. I’m working 55 hours a week and about the only contact with live people I have is at the Wal*Mart down the street, when I’m out to buy another bottle of Tylenol for these damn migraines. Oh, I got a new car. Um, but I guess you knew that already. Are those the kinds of things you had in mind?”

We have done a letter for quite a few years. I think most people get into problems going too heavy into details. Your took a trip to Costa Rica? Great! I don’t need to know how the flight was and what you did every fucking day you were there. Make it short and sweet, and use a big font. And don’t brag. Everyone’s kids are wonderful and brilliant.

I am somewhat surprised when people act as tho they are so “offended” by receiving them. Are they really worse than a card that is simply signed? If you don’t want to read it, don’t. And, if I do say so myself, the missus and I give good letter. I write the basics, and Mrs D edits it and gives it its final style. I envy those gifted few who are able to successfully pull off humorous “themed” letters, Juniper. Maybe we can start a thread where we post our letters for the board? I submitted the first draft to the boss for editing yesterday.

And I must acknowledge that a significant motivation is efficiency. I used to feel guilty about just signing my name. So I would write lengthy personal messages. Which made the sending of cards into a chore. Not an enhancement of my x-mas mood. And who am I kidding - how “personal” were the majority of my greetings?

I have often wondered about the very sending of seasonal greeting cards, especially if that is your only contact with the address overthe course of a year. Are you celebrating current relationships, remembering/mourning past ones, or trying to maintain past relationships in a state of stasis should conditions permit them to flower in the future? In any event, I don’t think it is inappropriate to remind folks, hey, we’re still living in the same home, the kids are x,y,z ages, and we are engaged in these leisure activities. Oh yeah - we send a pic of our kids (and the dog if we can convince her to cooperate) as well. Not to everyone. The list has some folk who get only the card, some get the card and letter, and some get a card, letter, and photo.

I suppose Xmas letters were excusable—if annoying—back in the days of mimeograph machines. But now they have things called WORD PROCESSORS. You can cut and paste, so as to send each recipient a PERSONALIZED LETTER, with their name and everything! Why, you can even include personal messages to each recipient, with the click of a mouse!

So there is no longer any excuse for these mass mailings; all they say is, “We don’t care enough about you to actually sit down and take the time to write you a letter—so we’ll just send you this mass mailing.”

Gee, thanks! I’ll send you a Harriet Carter catalog in return.

My brother, a Mormon, gets a letter in his Christmas card every year from my aunt, a fundamentalist “Christian”, that details how he, his wife, and his three beautiful boys are on the fastrack to hell if they don’t “repent” and become her version of what a Christian is.

And a Merry Christmas to you, too!

Yeah, we got one from some pretty fundy folk. We get along fine with them, we just keep religion out of our relationship. Our kids seem to play well together, the wife has a bit of knowledge about gardening (one of my interests), and Mrs D and the wife share a fondness for orchids.

But, we know they are fundies, and they know we are godless heathens. One year we got this long x-mas form letter discussing all the efforts they were going through with their church to combat godlessnes, the scourge that is most detrimental to modern society. Tho it didn’t mention us specifically, you just have to wonder how fucking clueless some people can be.

Could be worse.

Can you imagine what Christmas letters would be like if they were run through the TMI generator first?

*We thank the Lord Jesus Christ for personally lancing this boil I have way up in my ass crack. I can tell it wasn’t a hemrhoid because the Our Savior spoke to me and told me that the blood was full of a milky pus.

Jenny got her first period! We thank the entire Trinity for helping her shead her uterine lining. Her breasts are perking up nicely, but she’s already told us that she’s saving herself for a nice Christian wedding.

Doug is becoming a fine young man. He was just got early acceptance to Stanford last week. We’re so proud of him. We’re especially proud of the fact that he no longer does the devil’s work by masturbating into his sister’s sock. We’re so glad we could save him.*
So be thankful for the small things in life.

FairyChatMom – post your letter, and we’ll see if you pass the “ain’t we great” test. Bet your daughter’s a charmer, and I’ll bet your letters are a pleasure.

Medea’s Child – Can I use this quote? “I’m all for glorifying God in your daily life, but that should be your life, not your glory.”

Rocket88 – See? That’s the kind of letter I’m looking for. Honest. If you’re going to share, share it all, otherwise nobody else can think “geez, and I thought I had a bad year.”

Dinsdale – I’m not offended at most of the Christmas letters. (I think I said I’ve enjoyed many of them.) I just don’t like these folks, and I really think they’re ripping off their church.

Eve – oops. I’ve done this. Inserted “personal” paragraphs into form letters. I thought I was getting away with it. Guess not.

C3 - Ack! Your Mormon brother hasn’t retaliated?

Enderw23 – Ha! Dare ya!

Dinsdale’s idea of posting letters on the board is a good one. Maybe not in the Pit though – ??

My parents used to hate receiving Christmas letters, but they started sending them when they moved to Europe about 6 years ago (understandable, considering the cost of overseas phone calls and the unreliability of the Czech mail).

They stopped writing them two years ago, when they realised that some people on their list hadn’t been told that my brother died. Just how does one phrase that?

“K. received her black belt this year, C. moved back from Vancouver and got engaged, P. unexpectedly contracted a blood infection and died in a great deal of pain.”

They chickened out, and now can’t send a letter to anybody, because they didn’t send one last year, or the year before yawn and so on.

I told them they should list every bad thing that happened to everyone that year (it was a record year), but they didn’t like that idea.

I received my first Christmas letter this year. It was from a friend I do not hear from much, she travels alot and lives accross the country, so I really enjoyed hearing all the stuff going on in her life. She included her new address and email address so that for those people (like me) who are terrible at writing letters and keeping in touch, can. I suppose the difference is she kept it short and sweet…and it WAS my first :wink:

My Uncle sends out Christmas letters that are phrased to make every family member look as bad as possible. They are hilarious.

My family doesn’t send out Christmas letters, on the theory that:

  1. If you are close enough to know about an event that happened in our family, we already told you;
  2. Hi Opal;
  3. If you are not close enough to have already been told about such an event, you are not close enough to hear about it in the Christmas letter.

I personally send cards, which are more work since I buy them blank (or those UNICEF cards with greetings in six languages). That way I can personalize them according to religion (Good Yule to pagans, Season’s Greetings to everybody else) and language (some in English, some in French, some in Spanish, and some in Esperanto). My friends are quite diverse.

I pride myself on my inventive New Year’s cards—this year is the photo from the back of my book, of Anna Held perched jauntily atop an ostrich. I just sign 'em.

Like Matt says, I keep in touch through the year with anyone I care enough about to send a card to. The only exception is the ass-kissing business contacts I HAVE to send cards to, to remind 'em I’m alive and hireable.

Tell ya what - when I get home, I’ll post it on my website, then interested parties can seek it out themselves. Fascinating tho I find myself, I won’t subject the unwilling to my ramblings, musings, and random thoughts.

Well, at least not more than necessary…
:slight_smile:

blush
Go for it. It is a pretty sentiment isn’t it?

[sub] I love when I figure out how to say good things well. Makes me feel useful.[/sub]

My favorite Christmas letter is always from my aunt in Seattle. She’a a very interesting person and her letters include things like how she and her boyfriend started a hydrotherapy business. The website includes directions to get there by foot or kyack. She rocks.

C3…I don’t know how I would get her back, but I would find a way. Send her books like “How to Build an Altar” or Crowley stuff. Some sort of “We may be going to hell, but we’re laughing all the way down” message. A bag of goat’s blood. Something.