<p>My husband’s great-aunt used to write the best letters, filled with amusing & self-deprecating anecdotes about her cross-country trips with her friend. She always managed to make the least little event sound like fun. An inspiration to us all.</p>
<p>So yes, definitely preferable to a card with only a signature!</p>
<p>We get a quintessential Christmas letter every year from a former colleague of my H’s and his wife, a professional writer. It is just hilarious and I look forward to getting it. They have a large sailboat (we sailed for six weeks in Alaska, eating fresh crab every night) and travel quite a bit (here we are in the hills of Cinque Terra…). The woman is a good writer but the bragging tone is distinct.</p>
<p>I would rather receive any kind of letter than just a signature.</p>
<p>One of the best things about doing a Christmas letter post Christmas is the e-mails we get afterwards. Many people are so stressed about getting the card/letter out before December 25 that they don’t feel they can take the time to write even a couple of sentences. At least that the excuse I give those friends whom we get the picture only cards from.</p>
<p>A friend of ours used to do a messiest bedroom of the family award every year.</p>
<p>I get a few every year–and one I salivate over. I can still remember phrases he’s used in past letters. Hysterical! He’s a lawyer, not a professional writer, but easily could write for SNL or Ricky Gervais. I don’t mind the bragging bits because they are interlaced with small life triumphs they’ve had. Besides, our trips are often among the highlights of our year as well.</p>
<p>I dislike the laundry list of bragging rights…but mostly because the writers are so pedestrian. That’s hardly the Christmas spirit, is it? Bad cheers…</p>
<p>We send about a hundred cards each year to extended family and friends. We enclose a color photocopy page of several family photos taken during the year. We try to depict events or activities that were significant to us as a family that year, but make a concerted effort to avoid bragging. This means a kid might be shown in a sports uniform, in action, but not holding a trophy. The card is hand signed and dated, with the recipients names handwritten at the top. The envelopes are printed. This year I am going to address labels if I can manage it, just to simplify. I do like handwritten addresses, but something has got to give.</p>
<p>I love to get letters. Not the bragging ones, of course. But I like to know what my friends have been up to and how their families are doing.</p>
<p>LOL. I know what you mean about the vacations! One of my favorite Christmas letters was from a friend which had a collage of pictures of their only child (age something cute like 5 as I recall) with funny captions. Our letters are succinct (they have to squeeze onto the leftover space of our homemade theme cards)</p>
<p>My pet peeve is the card I get from a friend each Christmas, signed with her name and her husband’s and “and Girls”. They have two teenaged daughters, and each of them has an actual name. Would it be so awful to write them out?</p>
<p>Be careful when you send letters…we have a couple families that sends them every year, and one family has many daughters, who are not equal in acomplishments, and in the letters you can tell mom is searching for things to say so the paragrphas are the same length</p>
<p>with another family, dad was “quit” his job and was being a house dad, and mom’s feeling irked came through loud and clear</p>
<p>so if you are doing the letters be careful</p>
<p>I used to write individual notes to everyone, but after several moves my list got longer and I started doing the generic letter with photos. I LOVE getting these letters–bragging is fine with me–I think of it more as “reporting” than bragging. If a friend’s or cousin’s kid received an award or accomplished something that year, I want to know. The Christmas letter is the only way I’m gonna find out–so tell me about it. Brag away so I can be proud of them too! I still hand-write the addresses (mostly because I don’t know how to print labels).</p>
<p>I confess, I do the letter and the picture. Over the years the photo has been the bane of my existence from teenaged pimples (before photoshop) to sports bruises on the face, to one kid cracking her chin open on the Saturday evening during the set up for the photo- yes, all the kids remind me every year that my refrain was, “don’t get blood on the Christmas Sweater!” Hey, I knew a split chin was no big deal- getting blood out is a big deal 
And that was a big ER bill I really didn’t need to spend money on!</p>
<p>Since the first left for university it has become an adventure to get every one in the same place and we are almost ready for a Brady Bunch collage.</p>
<p>I too find myself irritated with receiving a plain card people who give no photo and no news, after living in many places over the years, i want to see what those kids look like and want to hear about their lives.</p>
<p>We need to start a petition asking for a holiday letter from the slugg family and the curmudgeon family, that would be some quality writing. Next to them, mine is way to sincere ;)</p>
<p>I like the letters, though I’ve never had the nerve to do one. Maybe this thread will nudge me into it.</p>
<p>I do have one friend, though, whose letters get read out loud for their over the top-ness. In the past, she has actually included SAT scores. Unfortunately, two of her kids are big “achievers” in the conventional sense, while the middle one is, ahem, finding his own way. His paragraph always has that short, sketchy quality to it…</p>
<p>It is hard to even out the paragraphs…one of mine has fewer print worthy accomplishments in that she is just an awesome person, but doesn’t go around collecting awards wily-nilly, she lives life deliberately and is all the good things you would want, but it is tough to put into words and can look less impressive than the one who accumulates conventional kudos.</p>
<p>Sometimes when i read the ones which come across as bragging, I try to think that the parents are as surprised by their kids good fortune as every one else and that they are sharing their amazement. With others it is one upsmanship!</p>