The Christmas Card: It’s Not a Contest, Except It Kinda Is.

Oh, Christmas cards. While I love the pictures (we keep them up for the entire year, replacing it with the following year’s photo), the cards can be downright painful. Like the one from a distant family member that included a page and half describing the installation of his new in-ground sprinkler system. Or the one from a friend that had a detailed description of her recent fertility treatments. Or, quite possibly the worst one I’ve ever heard, received by a friend from a former mission companion. In it she shared the “joy” they felt at discovering her husband had fathered an illegitimate child, her grandfather’s death, and her recent miscarriage.

I understand wanting to share your family’s news — be it exciting, inspiring, or depressing — but in a Christmas card/letter? Really?

We have yet to send one out.

i think Feliz NaviDAD is really great. and the Peas one.

I think Tagg should carry on the tradition his father has set. clearly it’s the best to come from christmas cards.

Hehe, I can’t wait to see what you do now. I always have big plans to paint something extravagant but it always ends up that Shari puts it together. Maybe this year will be the year! Tagg’s families cards are the best. My favorite was the one with the chicken suit… can’t remember the hook though. Tagg?

Carla is right Tagg, you need to carry the torch. I have some ideas, lets talk.

Oh! I love this post! We have a few family friends who never fail to send plush Christmas resumes. I just relish reading them aloud to my mom in my most highbrow voice. I read a few sentences…we both dissolve into giggles…I continue on. It’s probably one of our favorite holiday traditions. Even though I get so much delight from these kinds of Christmas letters, I do find it refreshing when I read one that isn’t always sunshine and lollipops…just an honest update of the ups and downs that are a part of life.

Lisa, I visited briefly with one of your great aunts who lives a few hours’ drive from our home this fall and she convinced me that I need to send out Christmas cards (complete with family newsletter) again this year. She told me that she and all of her siblings have missed receiving our annual updates. So I was ready to begin writing the 2009 newsletter today, but then I read your post, and now I’m wondering…

Also, your Dad has a suggestion for a future Grant family Christmas card; he thinks they should do something based on a “Hot Diggity, Dog Ziggity Boom” theme (not sure how that’s supposed to relate to Christmas, but Ben is sure that Merwin can make it work!).

The last time my family sent out Christmas cards was when I was in kindergarten. My mother, a wonderful artist, designed and printed five different types of cards and then proceeded to hand paint (with watercolors) each outlined print. I still remember watching her… and watching her… and watching her… I think the process so burned us both out that neither of us will ever again send Christmas cards. I don’t actually feel that bad about it either. Thanks Mom!

But if I were to do it… I would probably follow the tradition of some family friends (and not my mother). They make a card from one family photo taken at some point throughout the year, usually from some great family vacation. Then you get to see everyone, they’re all having fun, there’s no added awkward photo shoot, and you get an update (at least of where they went on vacation) all in one! Seems so much less stressful and so much more interesting for the recipient who is looking at photos of Hawaii, or kayaking in the San Juans, or an African safari rather than people in matching clothes under a Christmas tree.

Christmas cards may or may not be the highlight of the season for me. One of my dad’s old football buddies from high school sends the greatest cards ever. Super super braggy. One year, they had each child write about his or her own accomplishments and it was actually worse than when the parents composed the letter. Our family always reads it, mocks it, laughs for a few days, jokes about putting it on the fridge, contemplates sending their family an equally braggy letter, and then inevitably feels guilty for being so mean.

Another family announced in their letter the amount of square feet in their newly purchase California home, along with a picture of the dad on his new Harley.

I think beauty contest cards actually detract from the spirit of Christmas, because they encourage people like me to be mean…

I’m single. I have a couple of things that have worked for me. This year, I will be sending Christmas cards, though I rarely get around to it. Just a hand-written note tailored to the recipient in a pretty card. I figure if I don’t love them/know them well enough to spend 5 minutes on them, they certainly aren’t going to care about my year in review. So newsletters are out.

When it seems overwhelming, I just wait until after the Holiday rush is over and send Valentine’s cards. Seems strange, as Valentine’s Day is particularly anathema (can things be anathema to varying degrees?) amongst the single set. But it’s brilliant because it eliminates the need for a full report on “What I did this year,” and who, I ask you, does not want to find a real-live Valentine in the mail? People love love. And showing that much love is a great way to avoid feeling sorry for myself because I’m still single.

Actually my uncle did your idea and sent out a Christmas card about my family. We got a lot of people asking us how my sister was doing, and how my brother was coping. Come to find out in his fake card, my sister was pregnant (not married) and my brother was addicted to drugs. He even sent out an old picture. We thought it was hilarious, but my mother did not find it funny.

PS. I’m with Sarah… the comment from “living in zion” was a bonus post buried in the comments section. Loved it!

Jess, your idea about Valentine’s Cards is beautiful. And takes off the stress of that one extra thing during the holidays. I just might adopt that for my family.

Not quite related, but my best friend once hand-drew and delivered sets of Vicious Valentines, filled with humorously mean quips about how terrible the other person was, or how she didn’t like you, how you were a horrible boy/girl friend, etc . She passed them around amongst friends, so it was just fun, not actually mean. Although I think she may have made some to order for other people…mostly people with great senses of humor. I still think she should make them in bulk – she could get a great price on those.

I LOVE Christmas cards, too. I think they’re my favorite part of the season. I love newsletters, too, although I don’t send them out. I can’t ever think of anything to say. We’re boring so nothing really happens to us.
We only get one bragging newsletter, but it’s quite a gem. One year, our friend “reinvented the role of stay-at-home mom.” I’m not making that up.
I wholeheartedly endorse Living In Zion’s rules. And may I add a 3(a)? Learn to pluralize your last name correctly. Your card is from the Smiths, NOT the Smith’s. That drives me crazy every year.
Also, Tagg’s dad sounds hilarious.

There is a couple in my ward who sends out chocolate Christmas cards to everyone every year. Even better is knowing that the wife is diabetic and can’t even eat her own card. That’s the Christmas spirit!

I have long been a proponent of the “holiday” card. Sometimes it makes it out for Christmas, sometimes it’s Valentines or St. Patrick’s Day. I have gone as far as Independence Day, but that’s my limit. Lately I seem to be sending out biennial cards for sheer inability to move any faster. This compounds the problem of fitting not one but two years’ worth of happenings for 7 family members into one page (healthy margins, reasonable font sizes of course). But I hold to the rule (I always had the rule, I didn’t know it was universal). Sometimes we send pictures, more often than not of just the kids because it’s easier. I try to be truthful and witty and keep a lid on my natural snark, perhaps that’s why the composition takes two years . . . . Since starting my blog I really want to just send a picture with my url on the bottom. But DH says that’s not nice. But really, what else do I have to say?

While we have some exceedingly verbose friends (3-4 double sided pages with no discernible margins!), we really don’t have any braggers in the bunch. I love to receive the Christmas news and pictures and really get depressed by the card-only people. I want to know MORE. This is probably because our dear ones are far flung from one end of the world to the other and we are all too busy and too uncommitted to regular correspondence. Christmas becomes the only time I get to catch up and wistfully imagine a time when we could all live close again.

The worst TMI letter we received, however was from an aunt talking about her grandson’s bowel impaction and remedial toilet training to deal with some fecal incontinence. He was ten. I was mortified on his behalf even as I laughed.

Last year we took our family Christmas picture in the photo booth at the mall. Then we sent the whole picture strip, chronicling the number of attempts it took to get a decent image of all three of us. My son was a year old at the time, and it was hilarious…WE thought. There were some family members, expecting the more traditional posed photo and newsletter, who expressed some displeasure. We might just do it again this year anyway.

I don’t remember sending you a card, and my daughter’s name is not Leah!

I am terrible about Christmas cards. We sent one for 2004, but it ended up being a New Year’s 2005 card because I didn’t get it out until January. We had one adorable son then, and the world (or at least people we hadn’t seen in awhile) needed to see his adorableness. The other 2 boys are darling too, but now we’re in school again and cards are not in the budget.

A family friend included his Ferrari in the family picture one year. Way to rub it in, you know?

Oh Lisa, please please send me one of yours!

I’m one of those with a what-do-I-do-for-a-Christmas-card-while-I-am-still-single problem. I want to share something about myself, but being alone in my household, that carries with it a distinct potential of being awkward, if not pathetic, silly, or ridicule-worthy. Though a touch corny (I started my Christmas card tradition within months of arriving home from serving an LDS mission, a period of time when cornyness and melodrama seemingly abound) my solution is to center what I write around sharing my gospel testimony. Inevitably, I end up including thoughts of what has happened in my life in the past year, but more importantly, I am able to share with those friends and family whom I love a part of one of the most valuable things I posess. To boot, I find it cathartic. I enjoy writing it. It’s a literary outlet- my Apron Stage, if you will. Furthermore, it is less about me as it is about giving something to others. My testimony grows as I do it and it helps me remember why we celebrate Christmas in the first place.

I love all Christmas cards: the good, the bad and the ugly.
I love catching up, (I love seeing how well people have aged), and I love the dinner table conversation the braggy ones always seem to spark.

My favorite Christmas card was a picture of 3 little kids all decked out in their Christmas finery. They were all bawling their eyes out. The card said:

“Have a crappy little Christmas.”

ps- living in zion: amen!