The Magic of Holiday Card Outtakes

Ahhh, Christmas card photos… the one picture you take that either serves as a highlight for the year, or a window into the chaos of real life. As 2020’s holiday season hits its peak, I realized I didn’t do a Christmas photo to commemorate this year. Maybe I’ll snap a few cute pictures of my dog and surly teens on the holiday to post on social media, but I didn’t even think of a Christmas photo this year. Who wants to commemorate this period of time that feels like the last semester of clown college?

Not me.

However, since I have four decades of Christmas under my belt, and I photograph everything because looking back on memories is one of my favorite pastimes. After wrapping presents Saturday night in an empty house; I went through the archives and found myself looking at pictures from 2008.

2008 could best be described as my annus horribillus. By Christmas of that year, I had lost my father, my job, and I was separated from my husband with two toddlers and a baby on the way. Death, the Great Recession, and life had knitted a sweater for me that was becoming increasingly smaller and smaller as the stress continued to pile on.

As a total Holiday maniac, I saw the holidays as an opportunity to have a bit of a reprieve from the stressors around me. I purchased a modest tree and a few stockings for me and the girls and that’s when I hatched my plan. I couldn’t afford the usual studio shot annual Christmas photos, so I was going to get us all dressed in our pajamas, set the timer on the digital camera, and our Christmas photos would be the three of us sitting around our modest little tree. It would be a way to commemorate a horrible year that took so much from us, but at the end of the day, hope for better was always alive.

While my mind’s eye had all of these great expectations of cherubic children smiling at the camera with me in the background, there was one thing my eternal optimism and hope clouded…

The reality of working with toddlers.

The funny thing is, the kids in these pictures are teens now, and I imagine getting everyone around the tree for a photo would be just as daunting of a task, except I’m not in my 20’s anymore and most of my optimism has left the building. We pick our battles on the path of least resistance now.

If you want to know what getting a three year old and a 23 month old to sit still around the Christmas tree long enough for you to hit the timer on the camera and run back to your spot and pose in ten seconds is like, imagine trying to herd cats hopped up on energy drinks in a dark room.

Now do it with blinding morning sickness.

Merry Christmas!

For an hour, I chased one kid running off, soothed a couple of tantrums, then suddenly my 23 month old turned into a glowering potato under the tree with a face that just said, “why.”

I don’t know why, kid. I just know this is something we’re supposed to do.

Finally, with no patience or energy left to spare, I said, “Let’s make funny faces!”

My oldest and I did… my 23 month old maintained her opinion of why.

Lo and behold, that picture wound up being the one. Where I wanted to show the world we still had hope and we were going to be positive that 2009 had better things in store for us, at the end of the day, the authenticity of WHATEVER, WHO CARES, EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE STICK YOUR TONGUE OUT AT IT wound up being the perfect ending to the year.

I wonder if we will look back on 2020’s photos in the same way. Will we still strive to curate a Rockwell moment as we’ve been conditioned to or will a newer and better authenticity come through in our pictures? Twelve years later, I can look back on these 2008 pictures, and while I will always feel the sting of the events of that year, this disastrous photo shoot showed that the quest for joy this time of year can never be erased, no matter the circumstances.