Every winter, my mailbox overflows with cards, some from close friends and family and many… Every winter, my mailbox overflows with cards, some from close friends and family and many from people I haven’t even talked to in years. But every once in a while, I open a card that encloses that little something extra: the yearly update letter.

Have you ever noticed that nothing bad ever happens to the people in these letters? They have all had the perfect year with their “Brady Bunch”-style families. The parents have always just gotten back from one of their many vacations to Europe or are still glowing over their newly purchased car. And the kids are all involved in at least three sports each and still manage to maintain their 4.0 GPAs.

Now, on my dad’s side of the family, there’s an unofficial and unspoken competition for who can make their family’s year look the best. As a result, we get these reports of their glowingly perfect existence, where they can even manage to make a broken limb seem like an exotic adventure rather than the result of clumsiness.

So, my family had a decision to make: Do we join in this tradition of gloating (make stuff up) or do we let our family know just how dysfunctional we are? Frankly, we were just too lazy to do the former, so here’s how I wrote my family Christmas letter:

Dear family and friends,

We hope that this letter finds you well. We thought of sending you a letter filled with heartwarming details of the happy and eventful year that we have had, but then we thought that you might, for once, prefer the unadulterated truth.

Mom and Dad have taken a new turn in their relationship, which has inspired the following truthful account of our year. They have now ceased pretending that they have a semi-functional marriage. Instead, they have come to terms with their differences, and have entered a new phase in which they talk to each other only when necessary.

In other news, Dad still doesn’t have a “job” per se, but he finds reasons to constantly be gone, and both Mom and Dad seem happy with this arrangement. After hearing about the rest of the family’s exciting vacations, Mom and Dad have decided to follow suit and plan vacations of their own. Mom will be going on a singles’ cruise to Maui, and Dad plans to visit the Bermuda Triangle.

Little Sister has successfully slipped through the gaps in the school system. She will soon be graduating high school without having learned anything of any use to her in the real world besides perhaps reading, a skill that she uses solely for reading manga. Mom and Dad have come to terms with the fact that she will probably be spending the rest of her adult life living with them. But Little Sister seems excited at the notion of never having to apply herself in a career.

Little Brother will be entering middle school next year. We don’t see much of him, as he spends most of the time playing video games in our darkened basement. He’s also playing trumpet in the school band and has started developing acne. In short, he’s on his way to becoming a full-fledged nerd.

Little Brother No. 2 is now in the seventh grade. One day while at his friend’s house, he decided to let his friend pierce two holes in his ear. One of his earrings is shaped liked a marijuana plant, which he has managed to convince Mom and Dad is a Canadian maple leaf. He’s made many new friends this year, most of them from after-school detention. He, like Mom and Dad, is on a first-name basis with his principal. His favorite hobbies are having fistfights with his friends in the parking lot, “Fight Club”-style, and beating up kids like yours on the honor roll.

I’m in my final year at Pitt, racking up the debt that I’ll be in for the next 25 years. I’ll be graduating in April, at which point I hope to find a job as a reporter, but will in all probability be putting my degree to good use as a waitress at Eat ‘n’ Park.

And no, Grandma, I still don’t have a boyfriend. But if it makes you feel any better, I was sloppily Frenched by an Italian in Rome and clumsily felt up by an American in London hoping for a threesome with my roommate and me. Both times, I was drunk. Merry Christmas.

Love,

The Hentges Family

Send belated holiday wishes to Rochelle at [email protected].