The Christmas letter, like all snail mail, seems increasingly antiquated. I was never old enough during the snail mail era to have sent or received many Christmas letters, but my parents got plenty, and so I became familiar with their format. Basically, you write old friends and casual acquaintances and tell them all the good things that have happened to you over the past year. This typically consists of babies being born, people getting married, vacations, and crazy weather. If there is bad news - say, a parent or grandparent passing away - its spun in relatively positive way (e.g. "they're in a better place"). Evidently, bragging is also a staple of the Christmas letter.
It got me to thinking about what people write in their diary blogs: does it serve the same function - keeping geographically remote people up to date on their yearly doings? What does it mean to stay in touch with people? Is it enough to passively follow their news feed on Facebook, or should I comment on their blog? Maybe there's more of an obligation to be positive in the Christmas letter than a rando blog entry, just as there's this obligation to be happy in general around the holidays. Diary blogs seem to be much more about self-loathing than bragging. Maybe the average blogger and the average Christmas card writer are leading very different lives (angsty teen vs. content grandma), or maybe the ways in which the modes of expression are made available to their readerships affects the content.
When I read diary blogs or watch diary vlogs, I desire a middle ground between too much bad news (which makes me uncomfortable b/c its just too candid, or just makes me think the writer is a pity junkie) and not enough bad news (which makes me think that the person is being fake b/c no one has that perfect of a life). As I visit with friends and family for the holiday and update them on my life, I also feel obliged to mix good news with bad (but mostly good) so as to give them the feeling that they're getting the "real" story of how my life is going. As sprawling and unrehearsed as our life stories are, I think we still try to maintain some balance of positivity and negativity in our recounting.
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