I do this too, which I guess is another reason I despise these letters. I take the effort to personalize each card and actually inquire about the recipient, instead of including a typed, general, form letter bragging about myself and how absolutely fabulous everything is going for me and mine.
And left hand, your continued “you guys are all boring, so quit complaining!” posts are not helping anything. We know you love the letters, good for you. We hate them. Calling us boring and dispicable or whatever the hell else crap you’re slinging isn’t going to change our minds, so I don’t really know why you keep on doing it, other than to feel superior to those who disagree with you.
Perhaps you should channel some of that self-rightousness into a nice holiday letter. I’m sure everyone you’ve ever known in your life is just dying to get a generic 3 page form letter meticulously detailing what’s been up with you this past year. Extra points if you don’t even sign the damn thing or write any sort of personalized message to show any inkling of interest in the recipients’ lives.
I used to collect this very letter. I had drawers full of them. I thought maybe I’d put together a leather-bound collection and here I find out they were all from the same author? You did leave out some stuff, though, MLS. You forgot the paragraphs about the anniversary trip and the one with the medical whatnot. Places were visited, MLS. Surgeries were scheduled and endured and then recoveries were made. Details, man, details.
We like to play the ‘read between the lines’ game with them.
Bobo is president of the Super Hero Fan Club and puts together the most amazing costumes of them for Halloween? Translation: We’re terrified that Comic Book Guy is going to be living in our basement for the rest of our lives.
Kiki is just the most popular girl in school EVER? Translation: We dread the inevitable day when we’re forced to raise a grandchild with the ‘she can’t figure out which of the football team he might have been’ father.
Another Christmas letter-hater checking in.
As previously posted, the assembly-line production is part of the problem. Also, the incessant bragging and the cutesiness don’t sit too well with me either.
At least with cards, the person probably took a few seconds to write a small note or sign the inside.
Invariably, if I get any Christmas letters, they come from people who never bother to respond to the family’s attempts at interaction and communication during the rest of the year.
People who work up an idiot fury over someone else’s harmless foibles get up my nose. If you gotta call me a self-righteous prig for that, that’s what you gotta do; I confess to not caring much.
I like the letters I get, but if I didn’t, I’d toss them and forget about them; certainly I wouldn’t be so sour, bitter, and contemptuous of other folks’ holiday traditions that I’d write a thread to rant about them.
May I confess to being a letter-writer? And liking Christmas cake!
I do keep in contact with close friends and family, and send sporadic emails throughout the year to most of the other people on my list (which I prune carefully every year).
But we live in Japan, and even when we do get a chance to visit people, there is simply not enough time to catch up with a year’s worth of news. For example one family with three girls, who we visit every time we are in England, do send a slightly bragging letter every year but I enjoy reading it, particularly as they always include nice photos on it.
Most of the people who send me annual letters write in a fairly honest way and do include ill health and worries in their letters, I certainly do because I aim to keep my letters limited to people who I know are interested in me and my family and would want to hear the sad bits as well as the boasty bits.
I guess you better set aside the next few years for policing the Pit then, just so you can heap scorn on everyone’s pointless rants. Much the stuff that appears in this forum is rather pointless, or a hyperbolic over-reaction to a mildly irritating incident. If you haven’t cottoned on to that yet, perhaps you’re not as smart as i gave you credit for.
Hell, almost exactly a year ago you started your own thread about a lame dessert restaurant is Asheville. Why didn’t you simply decide not to go back, rather than “writ[ing] a thread to rant” about it and pissing all over some struggling small businessperson?
I get one a year from a sister that I hardly ever see anymore. She lives in Beaumont and I expect her to mention how they got food out of the homes that had been evacuated during Rita’s approach and used it to feed those who stayed behind.
I already know about that because my parents live a block from them and Dad has been sending monthly letters. They all stayed in my sister’s house when Rita hit.
Looks to me like Lefty was performing a public service by warning people away from that place. I do the same thing when I encounter bad food and/or bad service.
A service for whom? The overwhelming hordes of people reading this board who are going to ever wander through Asheville and, among what I would imagine are a considerable amount of options in the town for procuring dessert, just happen to select this particular establishment (which, in all likelihood, isn’t going to last very long anyway)?
I’m with you, Left. I honestly like getting the letters. I like hearing what’s up with people I rarely see anymore. And if they’re too boastful … well, that’s a good laugh.
I really, really don’t undestand the hate. Toss 'em in the trash unread if you don’t like reading them.
My parents, thank god, never sent out a Christmas letter extolling the virtues of my sister and I, especially when we made the honor roll. That’s because they knew the difference between sharing news and bragging, and only provided such details when they were specifically asked how we were doing in school by someone. Otherwise, “the girls are doing well in school,” in a personal letter, sufficed.
Part of the problem is the impersonal nature as a result of them being copied and added as an enclosure. There’s no expectation of a reply letter, no interchange of “how are you doing, how’s your dog, did you like your trip to Dallas,” etc. For too many people it seems like a platform to trumpet their wonderfulness and then toss in a little “I hope you’re doing well and have a Merry Christmas” line at the end. Poor excuse for a letter whether it’s copied on red or green paper and stuffed in a Christmas card, or cut-n-pasted into an E-mail and sent out en masse to everyone in their address book. I’d make allowances for people overseas and otherwise in more difficult communication situations.
Well, that’s the thing, I think: It isn’t a regular letter. If you think of it as a letter, no wonder you don’t like them. Christmas letters are more like news bulletins. Because they aren’t regular letters, of course there isn’t an expectation of a reply, so there can’t be any questions. I actually like the idea that I can hear what is going on without feeling guilty for not writing back. In my world, guilt-free pleasure isn’t that easy to come by.
That’s the kind of letter my mom tries to write. It may include a slight amount of bragging and some mundane details, but throughout she tries to make it a humorous chronicle of the stupidest and most laughable things that happened in the year. Much better than the typical Christmas letter, although I don’t find those terribly bothersome, and I think the offense being taken at them by some people is bit silly.
