Christmas Card Day

Today was Christmas Card Day.  Today was the day when, like in years past, I force my children to wear their holiday outfits and pose for hours trying to get the perfect picture for the front of our Christmas cards.  Every year it is the same thing:  my son won't sit still, my daughter won't smile, nobody likes the poses I suggest, and we all end up yelling at each other.  We usually get a good picture, but it is followed by hours of tense silence until everyone gets over their various gripes.  So much for happy holidays.

This year promised to be even worse.  We were overdue for a family portrait, and the grandparents have been bugging us.  They did have a legitimate complaint.  In the last family portrait my son had no hair and could barely sit up by himself.  Now he has plenty of hair, and can not only sit up, but run, jump, climb, operate the VCR and get dressed by himself.  So I made an appointment at the mall for a photo session.

Thursday, two days before Christmas Card Day, I realized that I could no longer put off a shopping trip, because the kids had outgrown any clothes left from last year.  We piled into the car and headed to the store.  On the way, I pointed out that every year we are wearing red clothes, and perhaps this year it would be nice to wear green.  Two hours later, one and one-half hours of which was spent in the dressing room while my teenage daughter tried on everything in the junior department, we walked out with a bag full of red clothes.  I don't know why I thought it might be otherwise.  Two Leos and a Sagittarius - all fire signs - are not going to pick anything but red.  The Virgo is throwing in the towel.

This morning started off like most Christmas Card Days start.  My daughter wasn't happy with her hair, my son didn't want to get dressed, my husband didn't want to wear a tie, and I somehow smeared eyeliner across my face.  In spite of everything, we made it to the mall on time.  When we got there, I realized that no one had washed my son's face after breakfast, but mom-spit can clean anything, right?

I was pleasantly surprised when the family portraits turned out great.  Everyone smiled and nobody complained.  I ended up buying more than I intended to, but who knows when this will happen again.  I had to make sure it was well documented.

On the way home, I brought up the subject of Christmas Card Day, and asked if anyone had any suggestions for poses.  Nobody had any.  I sarcastically said "It's too bad we can't use one of the outtakes we always end up with trying to get a good picture."  My husband replied, "Why can't we?"  The kids liked that idea.  My image of perfect holiday cards was fading away.  This couldn't go well.

It actually did go well, and we got a good picture.  In fact, it was better than usual because the kids were having so much fun.  My husband would set the automatic picture-taking-thingy and we would all try to be posed by the time the flash went off, but, if we weren't, the kids would run to the camera to see how the not-so-good picture came out.  Once we got enough good ones, we decided to see how many really bad pictures we could take.  The "bad" pictures turned out better than the rest, because we were having so much fun we were smiling in every goofy pose.  In fact, the bad pictures made it to the front of the cards, and they may be the best cards we've ever sent. 

I found a quote for the inside of the cards:

"Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys."  - Andre Gide

This was what Christmas Card Day taught me.  The joy of the season had been lost in the planning and self-induced stress.  The perfect pictures came not from perfectly posing, but when we stopped posing and just had fun.  I think there's a yoga lesson in this.

That gives me an idea for next year's cards!  If we all did tree pose, I wonder if we could look like a Christmas tree.  Of course, we'd have to be wearing green...