The Anti-Christmas Card
Posted on October 12, 2007
Filed Under kids, parenting, suburban joys, snark, milestones, bitching and moaning, christmas, holiday fun |
It’s that time of year again; time for apple crisp and woolen sweaters and warm cider and replacing the screens with the storm windows. All this autumn and winter preparedness makes me realize that it is also nearing time for me to begin the long and arduous process of taking a photograph of the children for the annual Holiday greeting card.
Since this procedure will inevitably take several false starts, I always begin the project early. Each year we have several spoiled photo sessions, ruined outings that result in nary a presentable picture. The weather can be uncooperative and even on the sunniest of days there is the potential for a sibling brawl that detracts from the ‘Oh-aren’t-they-sweet-and-loving’ atmosphere that I’m hoping to evoke by forcing them close together and hoping that each have their eyes open, tongues in their mouth and fingers nowhere near their nasal cavity.
The bucolic settings, the cherubic faces, arms thrown tightly around each other in familial embrace is, admittedly, all a sort of fiction. A fiction that has become the single most important holiday correspondence that the great grandparents will receive all year. They then torture the same twelve people they see at Kiwanis club and bridge and Sunday breakfast at Shoneys for the next 365 days, whipping the card out at every opportunity or mention of grandchildren or Christmas or, say, diabetes because really they need no excuse to shove my children’s smiling faces beneath the noses of everyone and anyone they come across. this continues until the next highly anticipated photo arrives. And it all begins again. This one photograph of distant kin has taken on the true meaning of Christmas for these dear and elderly folk. I cannot disappoint them and so, despite the fact that there is major strife and unhappiness behind all that exuded joy, so much so that we have come to call it the Anti-Christmas card, the show must go on. I simply have to get that shot or die trying.
For two years running, both O and G have been punished after each photo session. “No ice cream for you unless you get your finger out of your sister’s ear! Stop making that ridiculous deer caught in the headlight expression or you will go to bed with no story! Get closer! Pretend you love each other! Look happy not miserable! I’m warning you, we’ll do this all day if we have to!”
So wish me luck and please, let’s all pray to our own particular versions of God that I do not have to resort to the ultimate punishment in pursuit of the Anti-Christmas shot…”No Red Sox versus Indians for you, now go stick that in your cap and smile like I’m asking you to you insufferable brat!”
I’ve included the past two years’ Anti-Christmas photos. See if you can sense the strife looming just off camera.
Comments
WordPress database error: [Can't open file: 'wp_comments.MYI' (errno: 144)]
SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = '288' AND comment_approved = '1' ORDER BY comment_date
Leave a Reply
