This Brutally Honest Christmas Card Wins Everything

This mom’s honest Christmas card will remind you of your own family

It’s officially holiday card season, which means a lot of awkwardly posed photos of your rarely seen relatives and friends with their families. We all have those people in our lives who take the Christmas card as their opportunity to update everyone about how awesome and amazing their clan is doing — bragging about their recent vacation, the awards their kids are racking up at school, that giant promotion that was so unexpected! No one’s lives are that perfect, which is why we’re loving this mom’s completely honest Christmas card that wound up on Reddit.

Meet the Allen family. Tom, Lisa and their kids: Three-year-old Landon, nine-year-old Hunter and 18-year-old Maddy. The family’s done a lot this year, and Lisa’s breaking it all down in the Christmas card.

Take little Landon for instance. “Whines all the time and doesn’t go to sleep when he’s told,” the card reads. “Cries when he doesn’t get Gushers after dinner.” You know how your cousin’s holiday update went on and on about how her daughter’s art teacher called her “gifted?” Not so for Landon. “Most of the artwork he brings home from church nursery is awful,” Lisa writes. “Our pride and joy (and the source of our drinking problem).” YES Lisa, YES. Raise your hand if you could have written this about your own toddler — right down to the shitty artwork.

Next Lisa tells everyone what nine-year-old Hunter has been up to in 2017. “Our energetic yet surprisingly unathletic 9yr old who just got cut from a soccer team that doesn’t even keep score in their games, I know … how does that even happen? Spends most of his time on his iPad,” writes Lisa. TBH, Hunter sounds like a mini-version of myself. We also learn that Hunter said his first swear word this year. While Lisa doesn’t seem too thrilled by that fact, if you’re managing to get all the way to nine before your kid’s reaching for the 4-letter bombs, you must be doing something right as a parent.

Then there’s Maddy. Some families will use the Christmas card as the chance to brag about their 18-year-old’s plans for the future — where they’re going to travel, what college they hope to attend. As for Maddy? She’s blazing a different trail. She “got fired from Sephora after telling her boss ‘just because I’m on the schedule doesn’t mean I have to show up.'” But she has a backup plan. “Wants to drop out of school to become Insta famous,” her mom explains. Lisa also tells us that Maddy goes over her cell data plan every month and was recently grounded for two weeks after sneaking a guy into the house to “watch a movie.” Maddy may not be on her way to running a company tomorrow, but you’ve got to love her because you’ve been there — either as a parent or as an 18-year-old yourself.

Lisa even gets real about her marriage with Tom — no #blessedtruelove. “Tom still tucks his t-shirts into his jeans and just took money from our retirement account to buy a fishing boat,” she writes. “His golf shoes are still currently on the steps after I told him three times to take them upstairs.” See Tom? Decide not to help with the Christmas cards and you will get called out, just like the kids. Better put some ice on that burn, buddy, it’s a bad one.

People are loving the idea of a card that speaks the truth for a change.

Can we make honest Christmas cards like this a thing? The aribrushed updates aren’t real life. This is, and if the Allens were my family getting a truthful card like this would make me love them even more.