Not-So-Traditional Holiday Pictures

Raise your hand if your family really IS as angelic and Hallmark-worthy as your carefully ordered Tiny Prints Christmas cards?

OK. Raise your hand if your family will never look anywhere remotely angelic for a Christmas card and you feel the judgey eyes of the world upon you as you can NOT get your kid to smile and remotely fear that this will end up on some “Crappy Christmas Pictures from the 2010s!” website or Tumblr (or whatever’s cool for stuff like that) someday.

I thought so.

Christmas cards are rough. Expectations are high and kids are over it the minute you start shellacking down their hair.

Speaking of hair catastrophes, last year my then 5 year old had a rip-roaring, mind-numbing, temper tantrum rager just minutes before our Christmas picture was to be taken in our backyard. We were all dressed up, my husband had a half hour before he had to leave for some coaching event (and was already pacing), our friend was there ready to shoot and the sale on Christmas card orders ended THAT DAY. However, my kid decided to flip the frock out at that very moment. I found out why later. You won’t believe this.

HE WAS CRYING BECAUSE HE THOUGHT I HAD COMBED HIS HAIR LIKE JUSTIN BIEBER.

But we got one smile. Barely. Blood from a stone, people. Blood from a fricking stone…

This year, we had no one around to take a picture. So, I thought it was time to whip out yee old, traditional camera self-timer. Isn’t that how it used to be done? Everyone lined up in front of the tree with a self-timer blinking madly and your dad screaming at everyone to “SMILE GODDAMMIT!!!”

Yep, that sounded perfect for this year.

So we all lined up in front of our door. My camera on a tripod and everyone’s hair combed. (No Justin Bieber look-alikes this year, I can assure you.) However. Before we got started, I used my super serious eyes and quiet “don’t ‘F’ with me” mom voice to demand a smile. Only true success, I swore coolly, would grant them each a milkshake afterwards.

Now. Here’s the really crazy part… It worked. A couple shots and we were done.

Huh.

Kind of anti-climactic, really

So. We took some more. And I thought I would share them with you. No filtered, perfectly-posed, matchy-matchy, one-shot-in-a-million Christmas cards from us. Uh-uh. THIS is how my family rolls for Christmas card time. Folks, I think we’ve started a new tradition.

And that was only a few. I think we could have done that ALL day. I recommend you do the same. You’ll get some less than traditional, memory-worthy winners, I promise.