Lying Letters

Holiday updates should be a chance to connect, not sugarcoat your family's realities

The Globe and Mail - December 10, 2007 • Facts & Arguments: THE ESSAY

By Susan Stephenson

Every other year I feel the pressure to produce the annual Season's Greetings message.

In our household, we usually send out a letter one year and a photo the next. Since last year was a family picture - always a challenge to pull off - this year it's a letter. Ugh.

Every time I sit down to write one of these holiday letters, I'm faced with an internal struggle: Do I tell the truth, or do I embellish my family's accomplishments and activities?

My intentions are sincere - to reach out and stay connected with friends and relatives in a caring and authentic way. Yet in the past, I haven't always told our family news in a truthful manner. While I haven't out-and-out lied, I haven't talked openly and honestly about the fears and disappointments our family has struggled with through the year.

As a psychotherapist, I help clients improve their ability to make connections and enjoy emotional intimacy, encouraging them to live their lives authentically.

Don't get me wrong; I don't believe it's emotionally healthy to "over-share" (in my daughter's words) personal information. Does 80-year-old Aunt Agnes really need to know that Billy was caught smoking cigars behind the school, or that Suzie's boyfriend pierces unmentionable parts of his body? But when the writers of holiday letters - usually women - sugarcoat the realities of their family's lives, they can create even greater damage.

Although "everything's great at our house" letters may be well-intentioned, at best they can feel forced and contrived. At worst, they isolate other women by making us feel that our families must be struggling if we don't measure up.

I'm reminded of a friend who bravely disclosed to me in a conversation more than a year ago that her teenaged daughter was causing problems with acting-out behaviours. We commiserated about the difficulties we were both experiencing with our teenagers. I know she felt heard and supported in her struggle, just as I did in mine.

Yet when her Christmas letter arrived a few weeks later, brimming with news about how happy and successful they all were, I was rather surprised - and saddened. Could her family life have turned around so quickly? More likely she was caught in the all-too-common trap of feeling the need to speak one way while actually feeling quite another.

It's troubling that society encourages us - particularly women - to project the appearance that everything's perfect in our lives; that we can indeed "have it all." The truth is that life is full of challenges for everyone - rich or poor, young or old, beautiful or average-looking, married or single.

Why couldn't my friend acknowledge that her family was dealing with hard issues? Couldn't she have shared just a little of the emotional pain - ideally sprinkled with humour - that she was experiencing in being a woman and a mother?

If she had, I suspect the recipients of her letter would have recognized and identified with her difficulties, and felt a refreshing sense of connection with their own journeys.

Being honest and open with one another is a much better - and easier - way to live than trying to pretend we're something other than what we are.

As individuals, it's tough enough when we feel frightened, incompetent or alone in our lives. Yet when reading a glowing letter, we're often left feeling as if everyone else is succeeding and we're nowhere close to keeping up. Such letters leave me feeling less-than-adequate about my own and my family's accomplishments.

So, how should we write our holiday letters?

If we embellish our achievements a little bit here and gloss over our disappointments there, we're perpetuating the dynamic of not sharing what's really going on inside our homes and our hearts. We're admitting that it's too scary, too vulnerable, a place to be. In fact, we're allowing the cherished tradition of holiday letters to become yet another way of avoiding speaking our truths - a missed opportunity to gain the care and support we crave and need as women.

Instead, when writing holiday letters - or other forms of personal communication - I suggest we adopt the innocent way that young children play: "I'll share something personal with you if you promise to share something with me."

This way, maybe we can be heard and feel less burdened and alone at those times when it's a little bit dark inside.

Susan Stephenson lives in Toronto.

This essay appeared on the Facts & Arguments page in The Globe and Mail.

E-mail this page to a friend »

Return to the articles page.