Round Robin Letters

[DrSeuss]

It's that time of year again. The Christmas Letters are arriving now. We get three a year, only one of which is worth the effort of reading it. Today saw the arrival of the usual missive from one family who feel that very little is too insignificant to tell us. Can't decide if they are very arrogant or just very boring. Then comes the one from husband's cousins who moved to Canada two years ago. The subtext of this one has been the same for the last ten or more years, "We are wonderful, our entire lives are wonderful, our children are wonderful, it's just so wonderful". Cousin seems to forget that her sister and mother are still in the UK and tell us what's actually happening. And they shocked the hell out of me a few years ago when the death of cousin's dad only made paragraph three, beneath the description of their holidays! The only one worth reading is from university friends who have two kids, one with Aspergers, and who talk about their kids in a warm, interesting manner but don't boast.
Am I alone in disliking these letters? I love everything else about Christmas and spent a good ten minutes today teaching Year seven how to use the Portable North Pole, so I'm not exactly in the ba humbug category. I only once sent out such letters when my dad had recently died and I couldn't face writing that 25 times. And yes, he was paragraph one!

Dear DasherandSmugly
Well here we are again - another year. Where has it gone? DS1 is off to Sweden to collect his Nobel Prize for Physics this week - we will follow in his wake, stopping off en route to catch DS2's debut piano recital at a packed Festival Hall...
Meanwhile DH and I are again gracing the cover of House Beautiful - who'd have though that out little twiggy gingham treehouse business would take off like that!
Hope you are continuing to muddle through life
Must dash!
Katisha

....and, as a word to the wise.....the Erasure boxed set Round Robin couple telephoned us all to say they were having a quiet wedding with just close family....then their annual RR bleated on about their fantabulous wedding with "all our friends from far and wide who travelled to the Lakes for the wedding". Which is why they are ex friends.

at Katisha

Bucharest I would have stayed friends with them just for the letter

I have never received (nor sent) one of these. I feel like I'm missing out!

Love this thread!

One RR which was sent to my boss once did the rounds of our office as it was so (unintentionally) hilarious. Lots of bragging about the kids and the classic line about the husband:

"Sebastian has taken to self-improvement whilst driving to work each day, and listens to a variety of audio books and music. Such was his emotion at listening to [random crapola book] that he often had to pull over to the side of the road in order to recompose himself and wipe away his tears."

And yes, this was an utterly serious letter, not a piss take.

I only receive one of these. It's from one of my mum's childhood friends. He is very active in the local community and sends out probably 100-200 of these letters, and they are always witty and lovely and never boastful. He sends them tucked into personally addressed Christmas cards, and he does hand deliver (well, at least he does to me and mine!).

I quite like getting the letter tbh, I certainly don't see it as rude.

The classic one was one from a work colleague of my mothers who left her children to go off with a "fancy man". She would write boastfully of all the travelling they did and never mentioned the left behind children once.

Oh and the uber families - four children, adopted disabled child, full on careers, extremely weatlthy, oboe lessons, Oxbridge, holiday house in Tuscany etc etc. Then finally the thing that cracked us up was the craggy jawed husband got his pilots licence. They really were too good to be true .

Oh I love them. I think it's more of a middle-aged thing as our generation keeps in touch all year via facebook/email, so it's probably a dying "art". We get one or two but mostly I just like to read the ones my mum gets from old family friends. My mum sends one each year too - mostly photos of her various grandchildren. I think it's a nice way to keep in touch. Are there really that many boastful ones? I have never read one like that

My mum and dad het a hilarious letter from acquaintances which is the total opposite of all the ones where people say how wonderful their life is. It basically bemoans their woes. And refers to themselves as "mother" and "father". Eg "mother is getting the bus to work now. It's always late". Shouldn't laugh at their misfortune but it is quite funny.

Ooooo I may do a spoof.

My Dad sends one each year - I find it interminably dull. But he has many friends overseas - perhaps they enjoy it, he still gets cards from them all.

I do one too - sent mostly by email now as I am overseas myself - and people can either read it or bin it, but since it sometimes contains important info (such as: got married, mum died, had a baby - all in one year) it would be nicer if people at least skimmed it so that they didn't make (in one case) rather crass comments the following year.

I don't tend to put anything self-congratulatory in mine - haven't much to be self-congratulatory about, tbh - and DS is too small to boast about his achievements. I try to keep it light and entertaining but no doubt some recipients will laugh at it for the wrong reasons, judging by the people on this thread. Hey ho - so long as they are polite enough not to tell me, it's no skin off my nose.

We get these from one of DPs relatives. I couldn't believe it was serious when I first saw is (had never heard of the concept before) but apparently it is. It does tend to come across as somewhat self-congratulatory - promotions, children's achievements etc, but then you wouldn't mention the bad stuff, would you?

I just couldn't do it though. I can't imagine feeling able to presume that people are so interested in me that they'd really like to get a newsletter all about me. The people who actually care know how I am anyway, because they phone me or email me and ask!

That's why I hate Facebook. I so do not need to read about people's fantastic lives. And I agree, it's sixty-something Baby Boomers who are the worst culprits. Do any of them have a child not at Oxbridge? I've got the feeling that perhaps Persephone is actually at the University of JustFoundedLastWeek but since it's fairly near Oxfordshire (Swindon) the parents count it as Oxford.

AlphaSchmalpha - I love that bit about the husband's audio books. I'd have split my spleen laughing if I'd've read that.

I love them, they make my year.

I like to decode them. "Hamish is taking time out of his hugely demading career" = is unemployed etc.

gramercy people often leave the "Brookes" off the end of Oxford

Yes, one of my schoolmates did that (many years ago!). She was doing Hotel & Catering at "Oxford" . Not to mention the girls after a toff husband who went to the Oxford & County Secretarial College.

My mum gets one from the parents of a girl I went to school with until the age of 14. I am still in touch with the friend so know what really goes on (her brother, for example, is an unemployed, dope-smoking waster) but according to the letters, their life is rosy and beautiful. The brother "has been doing some travelling year, including South America where he spent 3 months with his friend William, whose father is the UK Operations Manager for Danone!" (or something) which I basically intepreted as doing a drugs run. He also has a degree in Agriculture and an interest in "farming". Pure comedy.

The brisk lets look on the bright side tone of the letters when talking about deeply disappointing adult children is partly quite sad and partly funny I find. "Theodora is now shelf stacking which at least gets her out of bed in the morning. We have seen the last of the dreadful boyfriend thank goodness lets hope for better 2011" type thing.

In our round robin letters from family that would be translated into :

"Thodora is focussing on her career rather than her love life and has taken a job in retail structuring. This has her leaping out of bed with enthusiasm in the morning."

I love them.......my Mum saves all of hers up so I can read them too but my friends are now starting to send them as well!

So excited.

I write a personal note to go in all the cards of people I haven't seen much recently. Takes ages but does keep friendships alive.

We used to get a really dull one from some friends (not close) who have since dropped off the Christmas Card list. I think the classic example was when we got a blow by blow account, running to 2 sides of A4, of the struggle they had had that year to get planning permission for their shed!

Now we usually get only one from a family we knew who moved to USA about 6 or 7 years ago. It is quite interesting but does tend to fall in to the "Hugo is captain of the soccer team, Nigel is excelling at his French Horn, the girls are 2 years ahead on reading" category.

There is nothing worse than a round robin xmas letter. Who the fuck is interested in your graphic self absorption? If I receive any this year then I shall use them to light the fire.

I don't know what we'd put in ours - the most exciting thing that happened to us was that we got married, and most people on the christmas card list were at the wedding, and those that weren't, i still feel guilty about not being able to invite.

not that i'd dare - DH is still grumpy that his free stamps have to be used on cards to my family and friends, when tehy used to last him all year

although, using another thread as an example, we could put

"we got married in the summer and are very happy: Andrea has kept her own surname, which makes it rather annoying when we keep getting letters addressed to a fictitious wife of DH's. She didn't realise she'd married a bigamist! "