Once again, we have reached the time of year when families send out holiday cards that are more polished and professional that anything you’d get from your friendly local State Farm or even a national political campaign.
Each family is usually posed in a wooded lot or nestled among some artfully placed leaves. They all wear coordinating outfits: something classy, maybe monochrome J.Crew sweaters, perhaps those outfits with the matching ruffled leggings that I imagine involve borderline child abuse to get a 9-year-old into. Definitely not a too-small Elsa shirt with chocolate milk stains. Perhaps they hold balloons or a twee little handcrafted sign that reads “Happy New Year, Love the Pinteresters!”
I didn’t sit for pictures like this when I was younger, probably because I was one of eight. The sheer enormity of just getting us all to sit down for dinner was a miracle enough—much less put us all in matching outfits, much less make us hold some sign without using it to beat up a little sibling. I’m not going to say my mom didn’t try: we had many Easters in matching fluffy dresses. But once our numbers reached five, we were legion. My older sister opted out, and like Katniss, inspired a rebellion of siblings. We rose up to cast off the shackles of such sartorial oppression.
Instead, my mom sent Christmas letters. Most of my parents’ friends in that era simply sent letters; it was a simpler time. There was one family, who sent a picture of them on a beach every year all dressed in white. They were blonde and blue-eyed, and all of their three initials started with K. They seemed blissfully unaware of the hegemony in the photos. We hated them.
I had no intention of ever sending family pictures for Christmas cards. But somewhere along the way, all my friends started having kids—and they did. And the pictures were cute. Those babies! And the mom still looked fit! I wanted that too. I mean, my babies are adorable, and I’m very, very Photoshoppable.
And now we live in the age of the holiday card wars, which can be blamed on digital photography, or Instagram, or the cheap cost of printing, or the fact that every parent somehow seems to morph into a professional photographer once they manage to get their paws on some squalling Gorbachev look-alike. Either way, every year we face the annual onslaught of of photographic proof that your high school friend and her three girls Plaid, Paisley and Polka are all blessed. So, very blessed. Can’t you tell they are blessed? They are wearing coordinating sweater dresses and holding hands near a tree with goddamn red leaves! So, very blessed. It’s like Facebook in your mailbox. Falalalala freaking la.
It took cranking out a baby for me to want to be one of those people. I imagined my family photos, which would be fun, not awkward, I told myself. My hair would be perfectly curled. I’d wear lipstick and probably pants. “So thin,” that girl from college sophomore year who told me I was lame would say as she clutched the picture: “She just had a baby and she looks so thin!”
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
