The Elusive Perfect Christmas Photo
By ROBIN STANSBURY | The Hartford Courant
If you’ve got small children, you’ve been there before. First the bribes. Then the threats. And finally, the screaming.
This is not to tackle a discipline problem or potty train a 2-year-old. It’s all to get that perfect, all-the-kids-smiling Christmas card picture.
I still remember coaxing my not-yet 2-year-old son to hold his newborn twin sisters in front of the Christmas tree. He tried supporting them both with his small arms while smiling like he was having fun instead of looking as if he was holding two alien creatures in his arms.
Looking back, the succession of photos is comical, with one baby nearly invisible after sliding from his grasp, the other tilted away from the camera and my son beaming proudly in the middle. In the next few frames his smile turns to tears as he’s clearly been given an ultimatum from the sidelines. Finally, he’s smiling again, and visible near his mouth if you look closely are the remains of the chocolate we used to bribe him.
The next year was easier because the twins were walking.
Wait, did I say easier?
Trying to corral two new walkers and a 3-year-old called for a sizable bag of M&Ms and something to contain the kids.
First we tried the backyard swing set, but the seats were too far apart. Next, toy baskets were emptied and lined three in a row. Hey kids, come climb into your toy box. Fun, right? Their blank expressions in that series of photos gave us their answers.
Finally, we sat the three on an ottoman in front of the fireplace, Christmas stockings in the background. In the photo we eventually selected, you can clearly see the bruise on one daughter’s head, a small cut on the forehead of the other, and my son once again gamely trying to contain his sisters. Our digital photo file cruelly reminds us that that photo was the best out of the more than 300 we had taken that season.
Another year, my dad had captured a wonderful image of the kids sitting in front of a fountain at an aquarium. Gleeful, I called him on the phone and asked him to e-mail me a copy, forgetting he still used a camera with film (so 20th-century, Dad). No worries, I said, mail me the negative. Which should have been easy, except he had recently moved. The negative was somewhere among the dozens of boxes waiting to be unpacked, but just which one would remain a mystery until well after the holidays.
Our destiny, it seems, is never to have that perfect Christmas card photo.
The hunt for that perfect image now begins for us each summer, hoping to get the task done early with a smiling group of kids on the beach or proudly standing atop a just-hiked mountain.
Last summer, on only our second day of vacation, the job was done when we captured the three kids sitting on a sea wall, their arms wrapped around each other, everyone smiling, all three sets of eyes on the camera and — bonus! — a sailboat bobbing in the background.
Our elation turned to stunned disbelief a few days later when our digital camera — with that all important Christmas card photo on the memory card — was stolen during a moment of inattention at an amusement park.
In my mind, I begged the unscrupulous thief: Keep the camera, just drop that memory card off at the lost and found! I cried more over that lost photo than the unexpected cost of replacing the camera.
(This summer, we downloaded our vacation photos each night so as not to repeat that mistake, but alas, no Christmas card photo emerged.)
With Christmas 2008 inching ever closer, panic is beginning to set in. Mid-November with no picture is not where I want to be. So this weekend I will utter the words my family dreads to hear, “Kids, it’s time to get our Christmas card photo!”
Better head to the store first for a giant bag of M&Ms.
