Americans are notorious for holiday excess: too-bright yard lights, too many gifts, too much eggnog.

And increasingly it seems that the holiday letter, that annual epistle sent far and wide to family, friends and even just random acquaintances, is no different: too long, too boastful, too much information.

The U.S. Postal Service expected to have its busiest day of the year on Dec. 17, when some 275 million holiday cards and letters were predicted to be mailed. And ensconced inside those telltale red and green envelopes will be dispatches that etiquette experts say commit the worst of seasonal sins: focusing almost entirely on the sender and devoting scant time to the very reason such cards were first conceived more than 150 years ago — to wish the recipient a merry Christmas and a joyful new year.

"There is a real need to avoid that 'enough-about-me-let's-talk-about-me' syndrome," said Angela Ensminger, the letter-writing diva of Hallmark Cards Inc., and co-author of the book, "On a Personal note: A Guide to Writing Notes with Style."

To be sure, there's no shortage of "Let's talk about me" out there.

Michael Lent still shudders over a letter that detailed grandma's persistent bladder problems. Lent is author of the new humor book, "Christmas Letters from Hell: All the News We Hate from the People We Love."

Others equally haunted by the ghosts of Christmas letters past have launched dozens of Web sites this year where people can post the most egregious examples of self-absorption. An Internet favorite facetiously speaks to the trend: "Junior has re-translated the Rosetta Stone, correcting several errors previously made by linguists which has changed the meaning and importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls and shed new light and understanding on the Bible. ... He earned 72 Merit Badges in the Boy Scouts of America in one month and can field strip a F-116 fighter jet blindfolded and restore it to flight status using only a Swiss Army Knife."

Even the mainstay insert into these letters — the traditional holiday family photo — has seen significant changes in recent years. Shutterfly, the online seller of holiday photo cards, last year introduced collage cards that allow customers to include not one but nine family photos. Such cards now account for more than 50 percent of the company's holiday sales.

"Sometimes people just can't choose one photo that reflects everything they've done that year," said Kathryn Olson, chief marketing officer for Shutterfly.

But that's just the point, say observers of the modern American holiday letter. People don't need — or want — to know everything you've done throughout the year, from vacations to doctor visits to every eye-glazing second of Little League baseball or girls soccer finals. In essence: Put the "My Kid Made the Honor Roll" pronouncement on your car's bumper, not in your holiday cards.

"You should be brief and humble and sensitive to the fact that a good many people may have had crummy years," Ensminger said. "They don't need page after page of how great yours was."

Ensminger said she got a holiday letter this year that was so long and detailed that the thought of even reading it was daunting. "I was like, 'Wow,"' she said. "Some of those letters are really something."

Technology may be to blame for at least some seasonal faux pas. Americans blog. Americans e-mail. Americans share, share, share — even those deep thoughts you wish would just stay private, private, private. In his "Letters from Hell" book, Lent quotes a Christmas dispatch from a reality TV producer who brags about one of his new television series ideas: "Ultimate fighting among holy men of various religions. Sort of a 'Mother Teresa: Fists of Blood."'

Sure, there are those in everyone's life who do want every little detail: moms and grandmas, great aunts and best friends. But writing experts say to customize longer cards for those recipients while keeping everyone else's letters short and sweet. The Golden Rule? Don't even consider that your life warrants more than one page, Ensminger said, recommending instead that holiday letters be limited to no more than about 10 sentences.

That doesn't mean creativity has to be left on the cutting room floor.

Olson, of Shutterfly, cited one example: A pair of new parents who sent a photo of their red-faced, screaming baby with the note, "Wishing you a Silent Night this Christmas." It wasn't the perfect family portrait in front of the fireplace or tree (still the most popular holiday photo pose, according to Shutterfly statistics) but it was a down-to-earth Peace on Earth.

"Ideas like that take some of the pressure off," Olson said. "You don't have to have the perfect family picture where everyone is smiling and everyone looks equally good."

Jamie and Jay Watson, of San Carlos, Calif., created a holiday photo card last year that friends and family kept on refrigerators for months. The couple had been regaling people for months about a persistent squirrel that seemed to think of the Watsons' new home as its own. So one day they lured the squirrel — nicknamed Willie — into their living room with peanuts and took a photograph of him near a Santa hat on their sofa.

"People went crazy over that card," said Jamie Watson, 39. Watson added that she draws the line at clever cards and refuses to include the annual holiday letter because she and her husband usually just make fun of "those letters where people go on and on about every single thing that has happened to them all year."

Watson and most experts agree that the cardinal sin of holiday letter writing is the urge to brag. Manners maven Emily Post addressed such letters as early as 1922 when she wrote in an etiquette book about the least enjoyable letters to receive. She cited the "letter of calamity" (the Christmas dispatch about your gallstones); the "meandering letter" (the holiday letter that covers everything from your cross-country move to your favorite recipes to the health of your four pets); and, perhaps worst of all, "the letter of the capital I," (the conceited letter that raves about your soaring stock options, how good you look thanks to Botox and how your children seem poised to become presidents and CEOs).

As one holiday letter Web site advises: If you must brag about how brilliant your kids are, at least temper it with a little humility, such as, "Little Margaret won the Nobel in both medicine and literature this year, but she still can't keep her room clean."

Yet no version of holiday form letters will please some. Jacqueline Mansfield, an etiquette expert and the author of "Essential Etiquette," is horrified by how many millions of long-winded holiday letters are being addressed and stamped this very week.

"The current trend of sending out letters to everyone at Christmas that glow about one's past year's achievements imply a mass-mailing and are in poor taste, period," she said. "I totally disapprove of these letters entirely — but then I have old-fashioned English manners!"

Being British may qualify Mansfield better than anyone to judge the current state of American holiday letters. After all, Englishman Henry Cole conceived the idea of Christmas cards in 1843 when he hired a well-known London artist to design cards in which he could send Seasons Greetings — short, personal, heartfelt and hand-written — to all his friends and family.

Make a difference. Donate to The Advertiser Christmas Fund.