<p>Don’t want to step on any toes, here, but it’ll be getting to the Season when those “Dear Friends” brag letters start rolling in. Has anyone else besides me been tempted to draft a “Dear Friends” letter (farcical) with the most egregious of family news?</p>
<p>Yes, I’ve been sorely tempted.</p>
<p>When our boys were little, we started a Christmas newsletter; however, each person wrote his or her own part. Friends/relatives said they loved reading my boys’ parts. They tended to write about the bad food at Scout camp and the chance to shoot BB guns there, and how “my baseball team was really bad this year,” or “I finally scored my first soccer goal the last game of the season!” rather than brag about how great they were. What is important to a child is usually NOT what a parent would write.</p>
<p>Now that the boys are grown, I have considered dropping the newsletter, but a couple of relatives have asked me to keep it going. Perhaps something short and sweet, without the bragging, wouldn’t be too offensive. 
“My younger son says he is getting tired of vomit on his shoes after carrying friends home from parties, and he feels he will be lucky to pass Beginning German. My older son has beaten several video games since graduation…” (Oh, well, maybe not exactly that…)</p>
<p>Sigh…another obvious “weirdness” in my personality: I love those chatty letters tucked into Christmas cards! Don’t send one myself (largely because I just never get around to writing it!)…but my favorite holiday card greetings contain a letter telling me what’s happened in the lives of the sender…for some of my very dear friends, it’s the only “regular communication” in our disparate and geographically separate lives…so, anyone who wants to put me on their Chirstmas letter list, please do so…I love the news and I love it most when it contains “brags” about the kids!</p>
<p>Yep, I agree over-anxious mother, I don’t want the card unless ith has either a letter or a photo.</p>
<p>I do have people in my life who write the most obnoxious letters and my SIL did, in fact, write a tongue in cheek one many years, I wonder if those being mocked recognized themselves?</p>
<p>I actually do write a letter, but in my mind my audience is that old auntie and uncle we rarely see, due to distance, yet who love knowing about the kids. I try to include info about them as people, not how many trophies were earnedm, but what kind of person they are becoming. I also do not include the letter to every one! Only those who don’t already know the info and might actually be interested. </p>
<p>Susan, your letter sounds kind of fun…maybe we should start the perfect letter here…get slugg and her creative writing on it and we could ahve a real winner! I’d also like to read curmudgeon’s letter!</p>
<p>WHat I find is that its hard to make everyone look good</p>
<p>I have gotten some where one daughter is the “star” while the others ,well, not so stellar</p>
<p>and it shows in the writing</p>
<p>think medicore rec letter and a shining one</p>
<p>if you do it, keep it to one page and make it funny and embarrassing, otherwise, knowing that one daughter got on first honors all year and the other is babysitting, well, no matter what you do, one will look less glorious</p>
<p>save them for close family, the rest of your friends, well…</p>
<p>Count me among those who love getting those letters. We laugh at the ones that are over the top, cringe at the ones like cgm talked about, and think that we may be the only ones to have two different extended family members use the word “diarrhea” in their letters in the same year!</p>
<p>We’ve moved a lot and any way to connect and remember is appreciated.</p>
<p>I’m so lazy I don’t even send cards. But I do enjoy getting the letters, even the over the top ones. In fact I enjoy those the most as they are fodder for much amusement.</p>
<p>I’m guilty. I do wish, though, that those who don’t want to know what happened to us during the year would let me know, so I could save the stamp. </p>
<p>Mostly, my friends seem to be the type to enjoy hearing from me, and usually respond with a nice chatty note of their own, which only encourages me to keep writing. I love the excuse / opportunity to touch base with friends and relatives who live far away. (I don’t send letters to people we see all the time.) And I love getting letters in return. </p>
<p>I have, though, lampooned the “Dear Abby” letter complaining about Christmas letters.</p>
<p>I have always included a one-page, humorous letter in my cards; I wish more of my friends would return the favor. My parents used to receive one each year which was quite egregious about bragging and came to be a family joke. I’m currently debating how to write about D this year. I think I may say “D has received quite a few honors this year. Anyone interested in this list may e-mail me for details.”</p>
<p>I don’t send them, but I love getting them. </p>
<p>I can’t imagine any parent not being able to avoid writing a “mediocre rec letter” description of the less obviously stellar kid–we’re not overworked GCs–everyone knows something special about their own kid. Or should brag less about the other one.</p>
<p>I usually scribble the same basic catch-up facts into every card going to someone who I think would like to know; personal-er, but more work.</p>
<p>I do have one friend who goes overboard with the boasting; it’s the definitive cliche letter. But you know what? She’s had a really hard time the last few years; if she gets some pleasure from promoting the good stuff, who am I to not join in the celebrating? Life’s too short for that kind of resentment.</p>
<p>“…tempted to draft a “Dear Friends” letter (farcical) with the most egregious of family news?” --dke</p>
<p>We did something like this one year, dke, except instead of real news about our family, we stole from Milton Bradley’s Game of Life. Our relatives and friends were surprised to learn that…in January, H inherited a llama farm from his uncle. In February, I had twins! S had his tatoos removed in April, and in September, D went to college and became a fortune teller. We were so proud! 
That year, I think, we also won the lottery, but a tornado hit in March, and we had to pay $3,000.</p>
<p>When our daughter was around three y/o, we had a family photo taken at one of the wild animal parks around here with a baby chimp in a diaper. We sent that out as a Christmas card.</p>
<p>I have an tyrannical uncle who writes a long, serious Christmas letter each year, more of a sermon than a newsy letter. There’s just way too much information in those letters, and I really don’t give a hoot about my cousins’ spouses’ siblings! I guess, he finally got to my aunt because his Christmas letter recently stated that she had taken “an extended vacation” in another state! :D</p>
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<p>overanxious mother~</p>
<p>I share your “weirdness”…gladly! love ya! ~berurah</p>
<p>Me, I write a newsletter every year, and I look forward to the ones I get. I try to put in the important news–good and bad–and avoid bragging. I come from an extended and farflung family–relatives have settled in Europe and Asia as well as all over the US–and I enjoy the newsletters as one way to stay in touch. I’m certainly not going to send 50 personal letters (however appropriate) to my relatives every year—I just don’t have the time.</p>
<p>Do those of you who are annoyed by them simply object to the tone (too much bragging) or to the letters at all (the form letter aspect)? Would anything make such letters more acceptable? Is it okay, for example, to say that my son is at MIT if I also say he struggled with his fluid dynamics course?</p>
<p>The letters that come to mind are a couple of predictably obnoxious ones that we receve from people we have not otherwise heard from in years. They go on and on about their numerous vacations (one even puts photos on her’s!) , their fabulous promotions, with endless namedropping (including colleges, boarding schools, you name it).</p>
<p>I always wonder, how do they know someone in my family (heaven forbid) isn’t ill, or laid off from their job, or suffering from a mental illness and flunking school, or taking care of disabled parents with no way to go on vacation? (All situations that I actually have friends dealing with.)</p>
<p>Well, not to be morose, but really. I think if you don’t have time for a personal note on a Christmas card, then make time during the year for an email or a phone call. A photo copied letter that is all one sided news is not a friendship - or anything else worthwhile.</p>
<p>I don’t mind getting them from close friends/ people who we care about, so long as that little “nanny-nanny-boo-boo” tone is absent.</p>
<p>There is one I dread receiving however, and it comes in the form of an e-newsletter. The wife prides herself on her writing abilities, and these epic letters have sentences like " the leaves are slowly changing their vestments, like shy virgins, shedding their plain greens for vibrant hues" or “Jeff and I are marvelling at the softly arriving Spring, and are filled with joyous anticipation at the happy times ahead , digging in the warming earth”, and horrors, one of an Irish vacation, which detailed the planning stages of the trip, attached pictures of them on every single bridge…32 pictures in all.</p>
<p>Aside: I think the most “over the top” holiday letter ever is the piece written by David Sedaris, “Seasons Greetings to Our Friends and Family!” A recorded version from This American Life a few years ago can be found [here[/url</a>] starting at the 15 minute mark. (WARNING: this is a darkly humorous piece and may be offensive to some. The original recording, read by his sister Amy Sedaris, in the [url=<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1570425671/104-6946273-7346320?v=glance]audio”>www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1570425671/104-6946273-7346320?v=glance]audio</a> version](<a href=“http://www.thisamericanlife.org/pages/descriptions/97/87.html]here[/url”>www.thisamericanlife.org/pages/descriptions/97/87.html) of his collection “Holidays on Ice”, is a much better reading, in my opinion.)</p>
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<p>choc~</p>
<p>YIKES!!! ROFL!!! ~b.</p>
<p>We have a cousin whose letters over the years have included everything from her children’s accomplishments to a detailed description of her husband’s final breaths (breath by breath), as he died from cancer. We also have two friends who write their Christmas letters in verse, and have included the death of family in their poems (“We wish you all a season of cheer, and mourn for Grandma Sadie, who died this year.”)</p>
<p>I did my first one last year (after receiving them for so long) and now I’m not sure if I want to do another. I think I jinxed myself!
I wrote that we are blessed and have nothing to complain about…we have our health, jobs, etc…then one week later I was diagnosed with diabetes, almost lost my job, etc…so I may pass this year…
I enjoy reading them, even if people do brag a bit. From some, its the only insight to family/friends that we don’t get to see.</p>