<p>It’s that time of year again, and as I work on our family’s piece I wonder what others here think of that much-maligned seasonal offering.</p>
<p>Here’s my take: I much prefer it to a card with only a signature, telling me nothing about how the sender is – other than that or she still exists.</p>
<p>Sure, individual letters are nice, but how many of us can send over 50 personal letters at this time of year?</p>
<p>So I do the mass letter thing, but try to keep it short and light - a picture of the kids with brief (and hopefully amusing rather than bragging) comments about what they and we have been up to. </p>
<p>I appreciate those holiday letters that we receive – even the one from a friend I have not seen in decades who now does PR work for funeral homes and includes links to samples of her work in her letter!</p>
<p>The key is to eliminate the bragging. I don’t send them myself but I’m not sure I know 50 people beyond the ones I keep up with regularly through the year and don’t need to send a card to – a sad statement about me, I guess! </p>
<p>Humor coupled with humility is good.</p>
<p>Speaking about what the kids have been up to, what is your Smith grad doing now? What is life like after Smith?</p>
<p>I really don’t like a card with only a signature. To me, it is hardly worth the price of the stamp. I really want to know what people I haven’t seen all year are doing, how their kids are doing, etc.</p>
<p>I prefer the bragging Xmas letter to no news at all, and really like a picture, coupled with a short letter. Since most people send out a lot of cards, (as do we), I think it is too much to expect to get long handwritten notes on each one. Therefore, the xeroxed letter kind of covers the news, and I am always eager to read that news.</p>
<p>The bragging letters? Not so much, but still better than just a signature.</p>
Yup, I agree there. Self-deprecating humor is the best!</p>
<p>As for the numbers, there are some people (especially old college friends, former neighbors, etc.) with whom I would totally have lost touch had I not kept up the holiday time connection. </p>
<p>(sorry, following off-topic)</p>
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<p>Pesto, you asked about my Smithie-grad D. She is happily employed in her field (economics) with a very interesting firm which has international clients and allows her use of her foreign language. Surprisingly, it was her foreign language proficiency as much as the econ degree that got her the job. </p>
<p>There’s something neat about having your kid sign up for her first 401-k plan!
PLUS she has started paying off her student loans!</p>
<p>We all wanted her to have some “real life” work experience before considering grad school. I would be happy to provide details via PM or, better still, e-mail. (Kid prefers to avoid having her life detailed on a public forum.) All is good (even better than I would have realistically hoped) and we have no regrets about Smith. My e-mail addy should be on my profile - same as posting name at aol.</p>
<p>I send a letter with pictures - to relatives, out of staters, and people we don’t communicate with often. (Locals get a card with a brief note - or some times an invitaion to a party.) Judging by the response I get, I’d say the letters are read and appreciated. I suppose there are a few that toss them, that I never hear about. I try to make sure I write something that won’t appear on CC. I also appreciate most of the letters I get in return. I will say that some are better writers than others! But occasionally I get a piece of creative writing that tells me absolutely nothing about the family, and it seems the point was only to show how clever they are. That almost seems more “braggish” than the run-of-the-mill boasts.</p>
<p>Jyber - my S is also an econ/foreign language grad! Working for the government, though. Don’t think they care about his language experience.</p>
<p>I really like receiving them. I don’t mind people bragging about kids accomplishments and such. Bragging about money and super-fancy vacations comes off as tacky though. The ones I’ve gotten this year so far have tended to the brutally honest regarding kids and family issues. I’m not sure I’d appreciate that going out to an entire network of friends and family if I was the kid involved.</p>
<p>I don’t send a Christmas letter per se. For the group of long distance friends who we only are in touch with at Christmas, I send a holiday email. For the long distance friends and relatives that I want to be a little more personal with, I type up personalized letters on the computer (fancy holiday font and all!) and send them with the cards. I usually want to include more personal news in those individual letters and typing them, maybe a couple each day until I’m finished, is faster than writing letters out by hand. The email letter is great, though, because the beauty of it is that it stimulates almost immediate response! I love it! I almost always hear back from everyone on my list, and usually within a week. One old college roommate who I haven’t seen in 30 years replied this past week (I’d only recently found out where she was living) and now we’re in the midst of planning a mini-reunion in the spring with three or four others with whom we lived. </p>
<p>Personally, I love getting the letters and I don’t really care about the bragging. Our family favorite is written by the dad in the particular family and he is one of the funniest people we know. His letter is always the perfect mix of news and self-deprecating humor. We always look forward to receiving it.</p>
<p>Hey, this is like the ever popular question, “Is it better to take the hard classes and get a B or take the regular classes and get an A?” With ever popular answer being, “Take the hard class and get an A.”</p>
<p>So, yes we’ve been choosing to do a mass holiday letter with the same news instead of the card and signature only. Last year we put together a multiple picture one with captions under the pictures. Things like college daughter on a bike in front of her dorm, son at his eagle ceremony, family on vacation, etc. We got quite a few positive comments on it. We do a New Years letter instead of a Christmas one so we can work on it when we have more time - over the holiday break.</p>
<p>My sister-in-law caught me up last year. She was telling me about a trip they took, and, evidently, I said that I didn’t know they had done that – then she told me she had written about it in her Xmas letter and accused me of not reading it. Imagine?! ;)</p>
<p>My annual Christmas letter is quite an undertaking. I have often been told it is the best in class! I am quite honest- but try to be funny about the trials we have faced during the year. We had some really tough years with WildChild and some family things, and my letter sure didn’t read like the typical ones. On the other hand, we have a family tradition- the annual reading of my sister’ boss’s (now former boss) letter. We all howl with laughter as we read of her husband lulling the family to sleep playing music on his ancient Indian flute and the perfection of her children. We are frantically trying to get our hands on this year’s letter since my sister couldn’t stand the boss’s “excellent management skills” any longer and switched jobs-taking many of the employees with her.
My daughter was teasing me this year that my letter was going to sound too “normal” since I wanted to mention our mission trip and my daughter’s ministry internship and seminary discernment process. It’s a good thing I always have WildChild to provide me with good stories to balance it out.
I always put pictures in the letter. This year it is long- we moved to a new city, my husband had cancer surgery, I switched jobs, WildChild FINALLY graduated from high school and started college… I decided if I don’t hear from people this year (not referring to the ones I talk to all the time by email anyway), they are off my list. I think the cards with just a signature are ridiculous and a waste of a stamp. If people can’t email me or get in touch during the year OR send a Christmas update, I’m not wasting anymore time on them.</p>
<p>I enjoy receiving all the Christmas cards. I love the one’s with personalized notes, holiday letters, and the ones with just signatures too. I have to admit I am a little turned off by the ones that have the big three (preprinted signatures, preprinted address labels, and preprinted return labels). C’mon use just a little effort. :rolleyes: Personally, I’m not witty enough to write a really good holiday letter, so I try to add a little personal note to most of my cards.</p>
<p>I surrendered to writing the letter a couple years ago. My goals: make it short, and make it humorous.</p>
<p>I’ve gotten a few already this year. One thing I do NOT care to read is a list of vacations, like this…“she managed to squeeze in a trip to St. Lucia, Key West and is now going to Aruba the week before Christmas!!” (since the “she” in question is just one year out of college and living in expensive NYC this tells me she’s probably still on her parents’ dime).</p>
<p>Exception might be one significant interesting trip out of the country. </p>
<p>I’ll admit I like getting them. It sure beats the ones with computer-printed address labels (my own personal pet peave), signatures, and meter-stamped…the ones you know are just a yearly obligation.</p>
<p>Edit: cross posted with coronax2 about the labels…</p>
<p>We have a web page through AOL and update it every year with new photos and information - then we enclose a small card with the web address so anyone interested can look it up. There’s an “E-mail Us” link on the web page but very few people seem to use it - so we really don’t know who’s reading it and who isn’t!</p>
<p>I’m thinking maybe this year we should print something out and enclose it.</p>
<p>It is interesting to read some of the letters we receive - there’s a local radio talk show on WGN - Kathy and Judy - who do a segment every year called “Merry Medical Christmas” - with examples sent in by listeners. Amazing what some people think is interesting! I think only the doctors and nurses should be privy to that much detail.</p>
<p>We do a Christmas quiz every year – it’s multiple choice of 10-12 questions. We’ve also done a Christmas marketing brochure, a plain letter, and one year we skipped it altogether. Based on feedback, we went back to the quiz. Our customers are pretty demanding.</p>
<p>WashDad - that reminds me of one my mom (a teacher) sent when I was a child. It was a mimeographed quiz, with true/false and multiple choice (answers filled in), and a matching section for each of the six of us. (All I remember about mine was that it said I was hoping for a Partridge Family record album for Christmas.)</p>
<p>Because we have moved a number of times during our adult lives, it is the only way to keep in touch with those who have been important to us, and hopefully we to them. We try to put amusing anecdotes, and some have become legends in our previous communities, especially “adventure” stories of our brood as they make their way through life. Periodically even those who do not send regular cards will let us know how much they appreciate them and want to stay on our list. It is disappointing to get a card with nothing but a signature and “how are you?” I guess I would rather they not have bothered, because I want to know how they are! I try to send the letter out very early in December, in hopes that there will be a newsy response in whatever we hear back. One family’s letter is so entertaining (with stories and quotes from their world) that we keep a file of all their letters, sometimes dragging them out to quote a particularly funny event. I suppose the pictures are a good idea, but without them we are forever as young as when once they knew us!</p>
<p>This thread reminded me that it is time to do the quiz for this year. Thanks, friends. I was looking at this paragraph from our 2003 letter (a non-quiz year), and wanted to share it mostly because I wrote it so long ago that it’s like someone else did it, and it made me laugh:</p>
<p>“In an event unprecedented in six generations of Wash’s, #2Son’s baseball team won their post-season tournament, with #2Son getting special mention from the coach for timely hitting in the last two games. He recently turned down a $32 million offer from the Texas Rangers because, he says, he’s worth more than Alex Rodriquez and what sort of loser would play in the American League, anyway?”</p>
<p>I have now become the sort of person who quotes himself to seek the virtual approval of people who I am unlikely to ever meet in person. </p>
and send them with the cards. I usually want to include more personal news in those individual letters and typing them, maybe a couple each day until I’m finished, is faster than writing letters out by hand. The email letter is great, though, because the beauty of it is that it stimulates almost immediate response! I love it! I almost always hear back from everyone on my list, and usually within a week. One old college roommate who I haven’t seen in 30 years replied this past week (I’d only recently found out where she was living) and now we’re in the midst of planning a mini-reunion in the spring with three or four others with whom we lived. </p>