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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU to really dislike Round Robin updates in Christmas Cards?

160 replies

ShinyRuby · 05/12/2018 19:25

I mean the printed list of family achievements that some people insist on putting inside their cards. I had one today, a printed A4 sheet from someone who I haven't seen for a number of years. It had a paragraph for each member of the family detailing all their achievements over the year. I just found it all so very boastful & braggy. Obviously there's never anything negative &, reading between the lines, the achievements seemed to be no more than any average family. I know the letters go to literally everybody she knows. I can't see the need but maybe IABU. Anyway, it went straight into the recycling!

OP posts:
Oysterbabe · 05/12/2018 20:17

I think they're great.

SantyClaws · 05/12/2018 20:19

I get one from my cousin who I never see. The best year was the one that ended in a request for cash for one of their little darlings going to go on holiday climb a mountain for charideee

fuck off....

ThistleAmore · 05/12/2018 20:25

I love them! The ones we receive are either from very distant family members or randoms that we've somehow picked up over the years, and they do, as a breed, tend to be very earnest yet also curiously quite dull people.

The updates tend to be full of stuff about church (we're an atheist household), obscure sport that we we've probably either never heard of or know nothing about or excruciating details of children or family members we've never met (we're CFBC).

We save them up for Christmas Eve and then read them to each other over a couple of White Russians and the Muppets' Christmas Carol, i.e. when Christmas officially begins in the ThistleAmore/MrThistleAmore house.

I'm actually genuinely quite touched that people who probably couldn't give a flying f*ck about us otherwise (save retaining our address in a database) think that we might be interested in the minutiae of their lives. And yet here we are, interested AF.

thecatsthecats · 05/12/2018 20:25

YABU because they are fucking hilarious.

My mum became friends with the local minor nobility through work. Their letter included detailed breakdowns of their recent surgery, including photos, and comments upon their six holiday cottages on the estate. The kitchen toaster "has adopted socialist principles and is refusing to work".

kitkatsky · 05/12/2018 20:27

Stick with it. It's awesome when the perfect kids become imperfect teenagers and then it gets seriously hilarious!

pfwow · 05/12/2018 20:27

I LOVE them, really love them, they just fulfill my nosey nature I guess. I never actually get them myself, I just read the ones my mum and dad get.

Pebblespony · 05/12/2018 20:29

Well, you learn something new every day. I have literally never heard of this.

Littlecaf · 05/12/2018 20:37

My mum gets one from the parents of a childhood friend of mine who left our average comp & went to public school. Over the years the letters have gone from boasting about Nigellas’ academic and sporting achievements at school and Cambridge, and hinting at a promising career in the artistic international scene to admitting she’d got up the duff young, married the fella and now has three kids and no promising career in the arts and lives in a semi in Penge.

(Not that there is anything wrong with those choices just that if your parents spend 10 years boasting about how much public school is amazing..........yawn.....)

LittleScottieDog · 05/12/2018 20:39

It's become more of a 'thing' (in my parents' social circle, anyway) of doing them in photo format, so you'll get an A4 colour sheet with photos and very brief comments.

I'm not sure if my mum still does them, but I remember being very put out the year my sister got married and the whole sheet was photos of her wedding, despite the fact I'd received my masters that year and it wasn't commented on at all!

VivaDixie · 05/12/2018 20:39

Oh I love them. We only get one and DH always cringes but loves to hear about nephew Timmy's latest escapades!

I also find this one perplexing as she has two families (step parents) and one year she didn't mention her dad and SM at all. They must have had a fall out as the next year they graced the pages yet again Confused

Anyway, I always look forward to her career highs and lows and jolly escapades. Roll on this year Grin

Original poster
ShinyRuby · 05/12/2018 20:45

Ahhh thanks everyone, I've been having a right laugh at the replies. Tempted so tempted to send out a spoof to this friend....Grin Definitely never taking them seriously again!

OP posts:
FirstNight · 06/12/2018 20:11

Had a couple of sad ones over the years. One that had been written and printed 10 days before they died. Family decided to still send and handwrote the announcement at the bottom . (Friend was in their 80s)

The other was the cheesy "lets boast" letter. In the last paragraph they wrote "sadly DW doesnt want to continue with this model family and chose to leave her children" ...later we were to find out she had been subject to domestic violence.

MaidofEyes · 06/12/2018 20:29

DM used to send these out with excruciating details of our lives (me and DSis and in fact anyone else she cared to mention). Along the lines of how much of a pay rise someone got, illness, whatever. As teens and early 20s we would beg her not to do this. Now I think it's funny although why anyone else would be slightest bit interested in the dullness of our lives....

Talkinpeece · 06/12/2018 20:35

For those of us whose families are spread across the world, before the age of the internet and social media, the Christmas letter was an essential way to update people so that when you did meet up with them they had the foggiest who you were

some are hysterical
some are sad
but they certainly served a purpose

GrumpyMummy123 · 06/12/2018 20:41

Oh god my parents used to send these, it was ectrutiating!

We get a couple from distant relatives and one from an old work colleague. It's amazing. Includes holiday photos, details of any purchases in the last 12 months... Such as washing machine or printer. I find it endearing!
To be fair it's much less than I'd see from half my Facebook and Instagram friends over a year!

Sweetpea55 · 06/12/2018 20:52

We had a relative who would send one every year. Has a high powered job very wealthy and lives on the US. Me and Dsis would laugh our socks off. It was full of ' bought another car to add to our4 car collection..Travelled to Switzerland where snow from the highest peak was delivered for my bath' It got so large it was like the parish magazine

JasperRising · 06/12/2018 20:52

I agree that these used to make a lot more sense pre internet and mobiles! I used to love seeing what my parent would write about me and reading the letters from people I had mostly never met (my parents had friends in quite a few countries so we got quite a few). It was a mixed bag of quite interesting and excruciatingly dull... They still get a few and it is nostalgic to read them and yes we have also seen the creep of the page of photos with captions. Certainly a shorter read but actually the paragraphs of dull prose were half the fun.

PermanentlyFrizzyHairBall · 06/12/2018 21:00

There was some BBC show on last year where a family did a Christmas in the style of each decade I think from the 50s to the 90s. Either the 90s or 80s one had the family doing a round robin letter to send out. They decided to just make up loads of OTT showing off stuff e.g. we've had an extensive extension done, little Johnny has won Young musician of the year. They were going to end it "Hope to hear back from you" then decided no actually we don't want to hear back.

It totally captured the nature of round robins. I'm surprised people still do them though.

mrsfeatherbottom · 06/12/2018 21:01

They are called "Boast by Post" in our house!

PermanentlyFrizzyHairBall · 06/12/2018 21:01

The not showing off ones are actually sweet though. I would die of embarrassment before I sent one out myself but I'd be happy to get one detailing the hum drum of their lives.

3luckystars · 06/12/2018 21:05

I've never seen one of these or even heard of them. I would love to get one!!

What were the 2 names used for the fake cards, I'm DEFINITELY sending some this year, i love doing things like that. That would just keep me laughing for months, i am so glad I read that idea here. Is it Janet and Ted?

Melliejellie · 06/12/2018 21:11

Janet and Roy!

A580Hojas · 06/12/2018 21:13

I've only ever received a couple. Didn't mind 'em! Thought they were quite handy for catching up purposes actually.

mrwalkensir · 06/12/2018 21:20

We get them/swop them with old friends who aren't on social media. Love getting them and hearing what's been going on.

Charmatt · 06/12/2018 21:21

We used to get them from a neighbour who had moved away. They were really cringey and we would laugh at it so much! We looked forward to it arriving every year. They wrote stuff like 'DD has started working for Stannah Stairlifts - now there's forward planning for you!' and ''DS has decided that he needs to recharge after such a full-on final year of A-levels before deciding which university truly deserves his talents!'

....we found out DS failed his A levels and spent a year retaking them. He never went to university in the end.

Although it's funny it's also sad that they had to pretend life was always wonderful and nothing ever went awry.