Please let me clarify the difference between a Christmas card and a Christmas letter.
Christmas cards include a picture, a holiday greeting, and signature or closing. Occasionally, there is a brief message. Just a quick note asking about your family or wishing you a great new year. Christmas cards usually leave me wishing I could see these people more often or that I am grateful for my relationship with them.
Christmas letters include a job title, a standardized test score, specs on a new house, and a geography lesson spotlighting last year vacation destinations. Christmas letters usually leave me feeling homicidal. Honestly, I believe that most people would enjoy seeing my mugshot on the next 15 to 20 Christmas cards, rather than reading another Christmas letter.
I often wonder as I read these Christmas letters (armed with a glass of wine in hand and a barf bucket) REALLY?!!?!
Do you really think it is important to peg your second grader a "math whiz" or to use acronyms to brief us on some group you are president of? REALLY?!!?
Look, when your daughter gets into college on a math scholarship then maybe you and your husband can throw around words like "math whiz", but your second grader's ability to add and subtract fluently, isn't worthy of being attached to a card celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.
If being the president of some organization is so important to you that you feel like distant friends and relatives need to know about it...GET OVER YOURSELF!
No one cares. I mean just because I am president and founder of P.W.T. P.S.C.L.S.B.H.O.A.C
(People Who Think People Who Send Christmas Letters Should Be Hung On A Cross) doesn't mean I need to brag about it. Although, you can join my P.W.T. P.S.C.L.S.B.H.O.A.C page on facebook.
I wish that the pretentious a-holes that write these letter could at least be innovative with their horn blowing.
Surely, you took a creative writing class at Yale or some other elitist university. I mean, your second grade math whiz could probably help you use a thesaurus.
For example, I believe that Sophia is a "word whiz", but rather than coming right out and saying "My child is better than your child", I would hide my message in a sentence like: "Sophia can write the word POOP until her hand bleeds."
Another example (from a letter I recently received) "our new house has a pool and a hot tub." Not very subtle. I would have a different approach to let the reader know just how amazing our house is. "If swimming isn't your thing your stay at our house should be brief, because counting our 6 bathtubs, there are 8 things you could drown in here."
See how I actually even implied that people could come to our fancy new house. P.S. my son (another second grade math whiz) helped me with the addition.
I am not saying all Christmas letters are bad. I know some people genuinely like to tell friends and family the crazy happenings in their household. This blog is proof of that. I have read very funny, lighthearted letters that leave me feeling happy, entertained, and informed about people that I don't often hear from. These include wins & loses, happy & sad times, good & bad news.......LIFE. They don't try to gloss over life and all that comes with it, with new houses and smart kids. These are letters I can relate to, because I don't get the impression that I am supposed to be impressed.
So this post is for all the Christmas letter writers that are trying to impress me. Think about what you're intentions are as you sit down to write next year's letter. I mean, I have two smart kids, and most people reading this have smart kids. We also have homes, jobs and hobbies. Big effing deal. When you become President of the United States, cure cancer or bring the world peace and harmony then, by all means, write a letter. Until then SHUT IT!
I said Good Day,
Julie
