Smile For Posterity

The day after Thanksgiving. I still twitch just at the sound of it. Certainly the notion of spending any time or wads of money in the retail hell that is the Friday after Turkey day is enough to make most Americans flinch, but the one I'm talking about now is perhaps more personal. This was the day for the family Christmas card picture. Some years we were lucky and the photo would be done in advance - my two bothers and me caught in some mildly staged moment, suitable for framing (or printing on a massive scale).
Our family had a lengthy Christmas card list. Every one of them waiting anxiously for a picture of "those three boys of yours." For us it was a forced march. We knew that we were going to have to sit through endless poses and grimaces until we all decided to "just behave" so the picture could be taken. One of us would move. The next one someone had their eyes closed. Somebody fell over. Somebody hit their head. Somebody started crying. Everybody got on everybody else's nerves. Could you please not make that face? The longer it went, the less Christmas-y we got, until everyone (parents included) simply gave up. I remember one year the photo that was finally selected was by no means us "at our best." I think it was a form of retaliation on my parents' part: "If you can't stand up straight and smile, this is what everyone is going to see." It was shortly after that when we stopped sending out photo cards. Something about three boys and puberty just didn't make for such a happy image.
A few years back, a relative sent a bundle of those cards back to me as a remembrance of years gone by. I heard my mother's words about "someday you'll be able to look back on these and think about the way things were." She was right, of course. I saw a series that began in front of our fireplace - all of us in our pajamas. Then we expanded our horizons and moved outdoors. There we were for the sake of history. Looking back at them, it made me smile. I wish somebody would have thought to take a picture then.