[In another thread Joy wrote: "That letter from your "friend" needs no reply--no more than those long, bragging, mass-mailed Christmas letters" and it reminded me that I've wanted to ask this before.]

I ask because I've only got a sample size of one - one friend who never did the brag rag before she converted, but ever since has committed herself to the super-gag version. I don't know any other Mormons, so it didn't occur to me that those things could be connected til after I started reading up.

We only get a couple of holiday brag rags a year, but hers always wins in the categories of Most Offensive and Most Creepy. For example, IN the brag rag, she actually discusses how time-consuming - and yet important! - it was for her and/or hubby to create the brag rag! Just in case some of us aren't appreciating her full commitment to bragging, I guess? Oy vay.

I guess I might cut her a little slack on it (ok, very little), if she gets Mormon bonus points for the darn thing.

Christmas news letters were very popular with my parents generation; the "Bob Hope" generation.
They were the ones who came of age during WWII and instead of courtship and college and marriage, a six year world conflict broke out that interrupted their plans as young adults.

The war was in every aspect of their lives. They'd lived through the great depression, only to have sugar and gas couponed. It was hard to get new tires for their cars. In England, jokes were published in Punch about the years it took to even get a car to buy and then what kind.

This generation used the snail mail. They sent cards and letters and postcards. We found copies of our parents (Methodist) Christmas letters they sent to their friends from the 50s. They were mainly how much the kids had grown and that the family had been able to visit family that year.

It depends on the family sending the 'brag rag'. Some are informative and pleasant, but others well....there are numerous comedy skits that could be inspired by them they are so odious.

But the brag rag Christmas letter seems to be a 50s 60s hangover still going on in some circles of the church today.

My DD had to write their brag rag as part of her wifely duties when she married into a super TBM family in the 90s.
She's divorced him since and we get family news as it happens through phone calls, emails and FB.

We don't need a brag rag because we keep in touch with our loved ones...and we do not have the kind of long distance friends who'd want to know that much about our personal every day lives.

"DD had to write their brag rag as part of her wifely duties when she married into a super TBM family"

OK, thx! I was just wondering how common that is/was. It would make sense of my friend's situation. (Eventually, my Mormon friend began sending e-x-mas notes instead, but by that time the sources of her bragging rights had all grown up, any way!)

When I was interested in family history, I used to keep those Christmas letters thinking that they would be an important relic of our time for future generations. That was when I was young and gullible and believed people actually told the truth in them. derp

I hate those with all of my heart. I have some friends who send those "here's what we did this year" letters. I usually throw them in the trash without even reading them.

It amazes me to no end that they suppose I give a rat's rump about their dough-head kids I don't even know.

Kinda like getting an e-card for my birthday. Hey, if you can't take the time to put a stamp on an envelope, don't bother.

I have sent short compilations of the yr. but I don't go into detail. I have a Mormon male friend....his wife died maybe 8 yrs. ago....and his christmas letters are exhausting to read....I barely skim them. His is such a long letter and goes into detail about his kids' Mormon lives. His oldest son did some really gross things at my house one day....in front of me....a mom. Very immature.

I have a never-mo cousin (she's in her early 40s) that sends them out during the holidays along with the usual family holiday portrait. It compares very evenly with the couple of Mormon 'brag rags' I find in my mail box. She just puts a fundamental Christian and family vibe to it.

Looking at last years' version (had to dig it out...I hang on to family letters for some reason), it ends with: "God Bless and remember the reason for the season. I hope all of you have God in your hearts. If not, please ask Him in so we can all be together in the end!"

This is not an exclusively Mormon phenomenon. Narcissism runs rampant in all creeds and types. I would agree they seem to be less rampant now that social media allows us to keep in contact much easier. With Facebook we get to witness unrestrained narcissism 24/7 instead of just once year.

My Christmas card list is all non-Mormons, and of the 50 or so I get, four people regularly send a letter. Two fall into the "brag rag" category, but one of those usually does so with a heaping spoonful of self-deprecation. (The year that her husband made admiral, she wrote, "Which just goes to show, sometimes even a blind squirrel can find the nuts.) One is just a "this was our year" and is filled with stories of visiting relatives, going camping, etc. And the one we look forward to every year reads like ideas for a sitcom. It has tales of her young son scratching his name into the side of her new car with a rock, the same son experimenting with the valve to the water heater just before bedtime and flooding the house, the pet turtle getting to enjoy a rain puddle--until a bird carried him off, and driving her daughters to a religion class, and then sitting in the car with her atheist son while he does his homework.

I get brag rags every year from both a Lutheran and a Nazarene friend of mine. The only mormon one I get is from my own TBM dad and his wife. I just LOVE reading what they write about me every year and what I've "accomplished"

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