Once upon a festive season, opening your Christmas post would induce a blizzard of folded-up A4 paper, as a slew of round robin letters floated out from cards. These carefully typed missives, adorned with a few choice sprigs of yuletide clip art and some pixellated photos, brought with them glad tidings – and (not-so) humblebrags aplenty.
Blame the rise of the home computer and its partner in crime, the desktop printer. As they became more common from the 1990s onwards, these two simple pieces of tech made it all too easy to share the minutiae of the author’s year on a grand scale.
No longer would we have to pick up a biro and painstakingly write out their updates by hand; instead, we could craft a one-size-fits-all message for mass distribution to even the most distant of family members and the most tenuous of acquaintances.
Each page would be crammed with family updates that tended to be banal, boastful or some unholy mixture of the two. You could sigh in sympathy, for example, as you learned that Derek had finally reached platinum status on his airline of choice, only to be left bereft by the declining quality of the in-flight meals in business class.
His wife, Sandra, meanwhile, had her annual weekend away with “the girls” blighted by rail cancellations due to an excess of leaves on the line in the Milton Keynes area. Cue a thrilling in-depth analysis of all the labyrinthine twists and turns of the ticket return process, before the next paragraph cut seamlessly to their son Max, who had managed to master conversational Mandarin with a level of speed, fluency and downright panache never before seen by an eight-year-old, according to his tutor.
Could you, or anyone in your household, actually remember the whys and wherefores of how you met Derek, Sandra et al? Of course not. Naturally, though, that wouldn’t stop you from mercilessly mocking their incredibly boring and self-satisfied Christmas bulletin.
Why, you wondered uncharitably as you perused their selection of holiday snaps, did they all have the same haircut? Did they get a group discount? Would you ever meet them again, or would you just continue to catch up on the smug headlines of their lives ad infinitum, until the writer drifted on to the next life – or would their descendants then pick up the baton and recount their passing with a detached matter-of-factness in a round robin of their own?
Strange tonal shifts like these are, of course, another hallmark of the genre: the Christmas letter is one of the only pieces of writing where it’s totally normal to flit from a bleak account of the death of a beloved family member or pet to a detailed summary of, say, Ian’s golfing prowess.
As the round robin became more and more ubiquitous, mocking its clichés and tropes became something of a national sport, too. The best (ie the most insufferable) examples might be passed around from person to person when friends and family visited over Christmas. The Guardian journalist Simon Hoggart would compile an annual round-up, featuring the most egregious examples sent to him by readers; in 2012, writer Lynne Truss came up with some imagined responses for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme (they were, inevitably, the sort of thing that would lead to your name being angrily crossed off any future mailing lists if you did actually send them).
And, of course, it was totally possible to adopt a certain level of self-delusion, laughing at everyone else’s offerings while still regularly churning out your own, which might seem totally low-key and ironic to you, but absolutely nauseating to everyone else. One year, some time in my mid-teens, I amused myself by writing a parody version of our family letter, complete with a more accurate – to my scathing eyes, at least – depiction of all of our foibles.
It never made it to print, but we dug out the Word document recently, and it felt like a time capsule. Shouldn’t I have been engaging in more traditionally teenage festive activities like overdoing the mulled wine, rather than attempting to satirise my parents and siblings? Almost certainly.
But sometime in the mid-2010s, the Christmas letter seemed to fall out of favour. Perhaps it was down to the fact that they’d become so widely mocked as a medium. Perhaps it was because we were simply sending far fewer Christmas cards: in 2005, the British sent just over one billion cards, but by 2017, estimates were around the 900 million mark. Or maybe we just had a newer, more all-encompassing medium for bragging: social media.
Why bother with a round robin when you could bombard friends, family and assorted hangers-on with artfully posed holiday photos?
With Instagram at our fingertips, we no longer need to store up a year’s worth of boasts for one annual letter. Instead, carefully letting everyone know the details of our perfect lifestyles became a year-round pursuit. Why bother with a round robin when you could bombard friends, family and assorted hangers-on with artfully posed holiday photos? Or let everyone know about your latest promotion on LinkedIn? And for the in-depth updates on your child’s dazzling array of extracurricular activities? There’s always Facebook or a WhatsApp group.
We’ve all become such consummate gloaters that the Christmas letter now seems rather quaint. In fact, it’s reached the point where the idea of confining all our self-aggrandising to one month of the year seems gloriously appealing. And at least a paper round-up can be chucked in the recycling when the new year rolls around; you might spend five minutes “hate reading” it, but you won’t waste hours trapped in the gravitational pull of the infinite scroll.
As digital fatigue continues to rise and disconnecting from the online melee increasingly feels like a status symbol, the round robin feels reassuringly analogue. Gen Z and millennials are apparently re-embracing Christmas cards: in 2023, research from Hallmark found that 63 per cent of 18 to 35-year-olds were planning to send more than they did the previous year.
Could the festive letter be the next offline tradition to be revitalised by the under-40s? I’d certainly be on board: dissecting a round robin print-off is much more fun than analysing an embarrassing social media screenshot. I’m already dusting off some of my most boring anecdotes in gleeful anticipation.
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