Will The REAL Christmas Letter PLEASE Stand Up??

I just talked to my friend Beth on the phone the other day and she told me a story that made me laugh really hard. One of her friends was tired of receiving & reading another sickly sweet (nauseating) family Christmas letter in the mail, so she decided to write one about her family.....but use REALITY as the basis.

Most of the Christmas letters you get tell about fantastic vacations, children's milestones, promotions at work, remodeling projects around the house, and other achievements. I suppose my blog is sort of a 'year-round Christmas letter' to all who read it, but I try to be 'real' in my blog and not sugar-coat things. When I have something sad to write about or an annoyance that I need to vent about, I don't hesitate to write about reality (just like this post!).

Anyway, this person wrote out her family Christmas letter and included all of the topics she normally would write about in the 'traditional' letter that goes out.......except she told 'the rest of the story' (as Paul Harvey would say).

So on that dream vacation to Jamaica when normally you would write about the awesome weather, all of the fun beach activities you did and the great food there was.......she would write about how one kid had to go to an emergency room in the ghetto for stitches and the disgusting taxi driver that they had to deal with, how her husband got food poisoning and was throwing up all day, and the horribly sunburn on the tops of her feet! Hahaha. That's the 'real' story of the trip.

And for the holiday party stories in the letter, she would write about how she wanted to take her mother-in-law out the front door and put her face down in a snowbank. Stuff like that.

I freaking LOVE this cartoon!

Now, I want to point out that there are definitely reasons to be thankful and share what is going on in your lives with your loved ones, and in the interest of full disclosure, I myself have done the family Christmas letter (the first year that I was married), so I am not trying to cast judgement or be a hypocrite at all........but some of those letters really do make me want to puke. Just being honest......