Christmas Cards or Resumes?

With the holiday season upon us and the new year just around the corner, it’s the time of year when people begin to focus on goal setting. New year’s resolutions, life-changing diets, the works. And what better to inspire you than seeing how ‘great’ all your friends and family members are doing when you read their annual Christmas letters? 

Gone are the days when holiday cards held a brief ‘Happy New Year’ or ‘Merry Christmas’ –– now family members, and sometimes long-lost friends, feel the need to remind you how much better their lives are than yours. They highlight how their 1-year-old grandchild is already talking, their son just got into NASA training school, their daughter is both a CEO and full-time stay-at-home mom and they traveled the world on exotic vacations this year. But they somehow forgot to mention their recent bankruptcy, their son’s divorce and their wild child who is still trying to ‘make it’ in LA.  

The point is that these mile-long ‘annual Christmas letters’ have become a new version of the social media highlight reel. We only share what we want people to know, and we become less human for it. Are we really even sending people kind holiday wishes anymore or is it just one more platform to build our reputations? 

Leave your successes to LinkedIn, and be a little more human this holiday season.