Happy Holidays…from a bitter young girl.

Every year, my mom sends out a Christmas letter. She always hated the idea of sending a letter to people, some of whom she hadn’t seen in years, bragging about her life and children. Her mother kept badgering her to send one out though. So one year, she just decided to give in. The only caveat? She would write it on HER terms.

To this day, anyone who gets my mom’s Christmas letter agrees: it’s quite funny. She didn’t want to brag about her children and life, so she doesn’t. Instead, she’s sarcastic and funny and spends 2 pages talking about how great she is and gives each kid a sentence or two—usually complaining about how we are mooching off of her or something equally unflattering. It sounds mean, but it’s really quite humorous.

Another thing about my mom’s Christmas letter was that she always included a picture of the entire family. As we grew up and started living in different states and often going the entire year without all of 11 of us (2 parents, 5 kids, 4 spouses) together, John photoshopped us all into one single picture. But this year, for the first year, my mom decided that since we were all growing up and on our own, she’d do something she’d never done before. For the first time, she’d take a family photo with just her and my dad. This wasn’t a big deal. After all, all of us kids send out our own Christmas cards anyway with our own families. But it was a big deal to ONE person in the McCartney clan.  You see, one person isn’t quite ready to settle down yet. One person doesn’t have her “own” family quite yet. One person is still only part of one family…that McCartney family with mom and dad. One person doesn’t have her own family with whom to send a Christmas card out. So if mom and dad cut that one person out of their Christmas card, that one person wouldn’t be in any Christmas card this year. And that one person would be forced to send out these: