<p>I hate them, generally I refuse to even read them when they come.</p>
<p>I like them. Even the over the top ones. I am an insatiably curious people-aphile, and learning what’s going on with the kids of old friends from college whom I’ve never met is just fine with me–I care about the parents, and this is their lives–why wouldn’t I want to know about their kids???</p>
<p>I love Miss Manners, but I’m sorry she ever would take a “why should you care” attitude–I, for one, care.</p>
<p>We started doing one just last year; I have arm issues which make handwriting the same info into each card almost illegible, and H is a very funny person who basically wrote a warm, hilarious message which included a little bit of updates.</p>
<p>We will strive to be on the lookout for the “just throw it away types” and not send to them, though frankly, that doesn’t sound like the people I know. :)</p>
<p>I generally like them and this year a friend included a cute Top Ten List.</p>
<p>Here is a good site for suggestions.</p>
<p>[Christmas</a> News Letters - suggestions and examples](<a href=“http://www.tedpack.org/xmasnews.html]Christmas”>Christmas News Letters - suggestions and examples)</p>
<p>I absolutely love to read them. Even if they are braggy. One family used to send one that was so negative it was hilarious, we would look forward to that one every year. Now their lives are going so well they don’t always write the letters anymore. I hope they don’t think we wouldn’t like the braggy version too.</p>
<p>My husband is an amateur photographer, with way more family pictures than he can cobble into a collage on a card. So he picks his very favorites, makes a collage card, and then mentions the url of a web page with the rest of the pictures and the story of how we are doing. If you want to click through it you can, but you don’t have to. (In the past I always then printed out all those pictures and put them in little photo albums to send to my grandmother, who is not computer savy.)</p>
<p>This year, due to health issues, there are many less pictures. There is also my husbands day to day blog on how he is fighting cancer. So I suspect a holiday letter won’t be necessary.</p>
<p>We don’t send Christmas cards to anyone we see more than twice a year. We send about 100 cards a year, to relatives, college friends, former co-workers, all over the country. When we get a card from them that only has their name, the only thing I know about them is that they didn’t die that year. I enjoy hearing what everyone is up to. If they get my letter and don’t want to read it, they don’t have to. I admit that there are letters from some of my husband’s old friends that I don’t read. But my husband is very glad to receive them.</p>
<p>There was one adquaintance of my parents’ whose letters were so unintentionally funny that my parents would send them to me to read. The lady had always been a hypochondriac…even in their early 30s, she and her husband would to take their vacations to the Mayo Clinic. Well, low and behold at about age 60, she was actually diagnosed with a rare disease. Her letters described her various medical treatments and therapies with a breathless glee that was simply hysterical.</p>
<p>I get to do ours, and the WashMom appends some sort of heartfelt comment at the end. I don’t do letters, though. I’ve done the Christmas Trifold Family Brochure, the Christmas Marketing Plan, and the Family Christmas Quiz. By far the most successful is the Christmas Quiz. They are multiple-choice, always have ten questions, and the correct answer is always “D”. Here’s a sample from this year’s quiz:</p>
<ol>
<li><pre><code> TallSon has recently been cast in a school play. What’s the
</code></pre>
<p>play, and what’s TallSon’s role?
A. “Dental Hygiene and You,” playing Incisor #2
B. “The Great Western Melodrama,” playing the non-speaking half of a horse
C. “The Adventures of Lightning Man,” playing Thunder Boy
D. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” playing Francis Flute and Thisbe</p></li>
<li><pre><code> WashDadJr is a freshman at which institution of higher learning:
</code></pre>
<p>A. The Nintendo School of Computer Console Programming, majoring in
Rag Doll Physics
B. Mac’s School of Train Operation, majoring in Diesel Locomotives
C. The Wanda Trossler School of Beauty, majoring in Emergency Unibrow Care
D. New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, majoring in
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Well, I enjoy them…</p>
<p>WashDad, I’d enjoy receiving your quiz too. :)</p>
<p>My answer to the question is:
Of course Christmas letters are obnoxious and outdated. No one sends snail mail anymore. It should be a Christmas Youtube video!</p>
<p>I send a newsletter, most years. It’s pretty straightforward, good news and bad. This year’s, in fact, starts with “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I don’t try very hard to make it interesting or cute. I put in a couple of photographs. Why do I send it? Well, we’ve moved a lot over the years, and we’ve discovered that it’s nice to keep posted on people we used to know well… sometimes they come to visit. Sometimes we visit them. </p>
<p>I know the cliche is that “if they were good friends, they’d know this stuff” but sometimes even good friends are busy with other things. Sometimes they’re busy with other things for a few years. Sometimes longer.</p>
<p>Not that long ago, I got a note from an elementary school friend (so I hadn’t heard from her in 25 or more years) who’d heard–through the grapevine of Christmas newsletters–that my husband had cancer. Her husband was newly diagnosed with metastatic melanoma. We spent two years corresponding by email almost daily. Her husband was cured and the frequency of emails has dropped. Does that mean I don’t want to hear from her? Of course not.</p>
<p>WashDad,</p>
<p>If laughter is the best medicine, WashMom (and all those around you) will live to be 150! As I’ve said before, you are too much! :)</p>
<p>A further comment: we have friends–well, we haven’t seen them in fifteen years but we still exchange cards–whose Christmas card for years was a picture of their two golden retrievers. No note, just signatures. Then one year, a picture of two young boys and no dogs. No note. The next year, three boys. This year, one of them has a college shirt on. The other two, ordinary t-shirts. Oh, and they’re in Europe somewhere in the photo.</p>
<p>I still wonder what happened to the golden retrievers.</p>
<p>The only people I exchange newsletters with are my 5 best friends from college. We’re all over the country, and there’s only one I ever really see with any frequency, but I’ve loved following their stories for going-on 37 years. I love composing my notes, which have gotten shorter over the years, too. It makes me look think about what was important in the past year (this year, D’s HS graduation and subsequent entry into college was the highlight).</p>
<p>While I like Christmas newletters I have rarely, if ever got one nor have I ever sent one, I remember as a kid my parents used to receive them. What I think is interesting is the amount of CCers who send them. Any connection with likeing to write, whether on CC or newletters?</p>
<p>It may have more to do with being interested in other people and liking to share one’s own news as much as simply liking to write.</p>
<p>MOWC, I think your right.</p>
<p>Oh, my. I just received another letter, and I guess it’s the kind that many fear receiving. Full of the bitter truth.</p>
<p>There’s one college classmate who sends the most over the top form letter to all of our “group”. She lives in NYC and is in high gear most of the time, and her card reflects it. There aren’t enough hours in the day to physically do all of the arts and sports that she says her kids do (as she renovates her second barn at the country place) The rest of the recipients call each other up and howl about it every year.</p>
<p>I love reading these letters, as long as they’re not more than a page long.</p>
<p>I used to send one every other year; but this year I used my new Mac computer to make a photo card called “Year in Review.” It had boxes for 4 photos on the front, and 11 smaller photos on the inside. I had planned to write a letter this year since DS graduated from hs and headed off to mom & dad’s alma mater, but by the time I got the photos together the story told itself. DH said, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” So I sent the card out to everyone sans letter, but now I’m afraid maybe it was a little too “look at us!,” at least for the people who live in the same town as us and see us on an (almost) daily basis. But I’ve gotten some very positive feed back. I still think maybeI should have sent the photo card to people further away, and bought some normal cards for the neighbors.</p>
<p>Funniest letter we ever got was not intended to be funny. It was from DH’s grandmother’s brother, who was living in Arizona. The entire letter consisted of him describing his and his wife’s medical problems in excruciating detail. He literally said their lives were nothing but misery. He needed a knee replacement, he had gone blind in one eye, and his doctor told him one kidney was gone and the other was going. (DH said, “Guess he doesn’t really need to worry about that knee.”) The writer died about 6 months later. We felt bad, but honestly he was so miserable we couldn’t help but feel he was better off.</p>
<p>My favorite was from one of H’s colleagues who is now living in the California hills somewhere. They are gazillionaires & never miss a chance to remind everyone of that fact. This particular card had a huge photograph of their new enormous home (think Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous) with this line: “Bill took this photo of our home from a helicopter!” Too funny.</p>
<p>My next door neighbor writes the funniest cards with warts & all tales of her five kids. They are good enough to be published. One relative sent what we called a conversion newsletter. He & his family became born-again Christians and not a single thing was mentioned without praise for God at the end of the sentence. The cousins all gatherd around the computer that Christmas creating their own Onion style spoof. Another odd letter came from the child of my in-law’s friends --still don’t know why we were on the list. The letter was entirely about the couple’s cats, who were treated better than children.</p>
<p>This year we decided to include a photo of the whole family (not just kids) because friends were saying, “haven’t seen you forever. What do you look like these days” as we only send to out of towners. The photo ass’t took the liberty of airbrushing out my wrinkles and crow’s feet and sent the proofs back. I called her up and told her to put them BACK, that I earned every one!</p>
<p>I like to read the letters. A card with just a signature isn’t nearly as interesting. Virtually all of our cards are the hard variety, not email, so it’s interesting the number of people who believe snail mail is outdated. We hang the cards around the dinette door frame, which we can’t do with an email.</p>
<p>The letter we send is limited to one page of text and a picture of the family and pets. I play around with the border each year to make it decorative. We have them for every year going back 20+ years and they represent an important chronicle (for us) of what has happened in our lives. </p>
<p>We don’t send the letters to people at work or those we see locally, but do have college friends, certain relatives, and people from prior work/cities that we enjoy keeping in touch with at least once a year. These people are not close friends, but are more likely to visit when in town or vice versa than if we just dropped out of their lives. We keep a record of who sends us cards in return and those that don’t reciprocate two years in a row drop off the list, so presumably what remains are people who similarly enjoy exchanging cards. We have never found anybody’s letter to be obnoxious or laughable.</p>