Why your parents might be driving you crazy this holiday season
A Christmas Card Photo Story
Though we all hope our holiday season unfolds like a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie, sometimes it feels more like you’re starring in a reality show featuring twelve days of power struggles between parents and their adult children.
To better prepare you to navigate the season ahead, I’m gonna tell you a story that may help you better understand why your mom or dad might be driving you a little crazy this holiday season. So get yourself some cookies or cocoa, and settle in for Holiday Storytime.
Way back when my oldest daughter was a year old, we started a tradition of taking a Christmas card photo. Every year on a Sunday around Thanksgiving, my husband and I would conduct a photo shoot to get the best possible picture of our three daughters and the dog. We’d pose them holding sleigh bells against an evergreen backdrop or pile them into a little red wagon and pose the dog wearing reindeer antlers in front of it. Before they started having opinions about what they were wearing, I dressed them in matching outfits.
As the years passed, the girls became less enthusiastic about playing along. The year my oldest turned 20, I had to pile on more motherly guilt than usual to make the photo happen. But I got my picture.
The following year, the prospect of getting the girls to oblige didn’t seem promising. My oldest daughter was on the verge of a full-blown rebellion and ready to stoke the resistance among the other two. For weeks, I pondered whether I should insist that taking that photo was my motherly prerogative.
After all, composing a photo that we could tuck into our cards was my chance to show how much having a family meant to me. The rest of the year, my take on family life tends to be more Shoebox than Hallmark because when circumstances are about to get the best of me, finding the funny is a way to cut something annoying down to its proper size. But that Christmas card photo was one of the few times I went more Hallmark, shining a spotlight on what brought my life its true brilliance. Taking that photo was my way of sharing: These are my children with whom I am well pleased.
I was still vexed about the standoff when I went to an Advent by Candlelight gathering. The discussion at my table turned to evolving Christmas traditions. I was seated with two ladies who had recently lost their husbands and were facing a season chock-full of bittersweet memories. Whether they liked it or not, they would have to let go of some traditions they wouldn’t be able to repeat. It made me feel a little lame. If the widows could adapt, couldn’t I figure out how to bid farewell to our Christmas card photo?
After all, the Christmas card photo couldn’t go on forever. What was my endgame? Would we graduate out of the tradition once people were out of college? Would we stop once someone married because our family circle had been altered?
As I willed myself to accept that now was as good a time as any to be done with the photo tradition, I considered whether there was anything that would make my surrender more bearable. I couldn’t have a picture worthy of a Hallmark card, but maybe one suitable for a Shoebox card would help.
So, on a day when none of the girls were home, I made good on a threat I had made the previous year when we were wrestling over their cooperation. My husband helped set up the same red sleigh the girls had posed in the year before. And then I crawled into the sleigh with an understudy—Henry, the family dog.
When I looked at shots where Henry and I were looking straight at the camera, I could see in my eyes some of the sadness I felt about not having my children in the photo. But the picture my husband snapped at the end, when the dog and I were goofing around, seemed to strike a happier tone. We had a winner.
I realized that I had better provide some explanation along with the photo so that our family and friends didn’t think my photo signified a family schism, so I penned a note:
Dear Friends and Family,
Usually, every year you get a photo of our three beautiful daughters. This year, you get me and the dog. As the girls got older, they got more resistant to posing for our Christmas card photo. Last year, I employed motherly guilt to compel their cooperation. This year, I decided to let it go. After all, sooner or later, every tradition has to evolve. I thought this one would last at least until somebody married, but my projections were wrong. At least the dog was still in—I guess he recognizes who fills his food bowl.
Going forward, I’ll miss the challenge of staging a decent family photo on a late fall afternoon. In the beginning, it was hard to get a picture with everyone looking at the camera. Recently, the tricky part has been getting all three girls to agree on the winning print.
Why did we struggle every year to corral three kids and a dog? I guess the photo was our way of sharing the most significant work we did all year. And since we don’t see each other often enough, it was a way of marking time by showing how much the girls had grown over the course of a year. Now they’ve reached ages where most of the growth happens on the inside. Hopefully, our paths will cross soon, and you’ll get to experience these almost-fully-grown women for yourself.
So, we are officially signing off with this holiday tradition. Here’s hoping that you—and we—come up with equally satisfying ways to stay connected and some new Christmas traditions. We look forward to seeing your Christmas card photos for as long as you’re able to coerce your offspring. Before we know it, these people will be wrangling their own babies for Christmas card photos. Merry Christmas!
When I sent out our cards, I felt satisfied with the closing ceremony I’d created for our tradition. My silly picture had taken some of the sting out of this being the end, and I knew it would give people a laugh. I felt like I’d marked two decades of meaningful work raising three young women who hadn’t yet turned into hoochie mamas. It was like throwing myself a little virtual retirement party for my parenting swan song.
My younger two daughters didn’t love the letter because they felt the note should finger the oldest child as the culprit behind the end of the tradition. But as I pointed out, she was doing what oldest children tend to do—reaching the next developmental stage first. They all would have felt the same way about the Christmas card photo sooner or later.
The biggest surprise was how much my mailing struck a chord with people at the same stage of the parenting game. Two friends told me it made them feel less guilty about not sending out their Christmas card photos that year. Another friend said she had wondered how much longer she would be able to get her two college-aged sons to comply with her photo request.
One friend waited until she saw me in person to tell me how much she appreciated my photo. She wanted to understand more about what motivated me to handle the whole thing the way I did, because she struggled to let go.
Clearly, I was not alone in my predicament. But we all have to adjust to our planned, yet in some ways unwelcome, obsolescence.
So, if you’re feeling frustrated because your mom or dad is clinging to a holiday tradition that you wish had long since expired, or acting like you’re still a teenager, remember my little story. Hopefully, it gives you some insight into what may be going on in your parents’ heads.
Being a hands-on parent is a hard job to walk away from. After all, we invested more than two decades of daily effort into ensuring you were safe, well, and on the right track.
Even when we feel joy or satisfaction about successfully raising you to adulthood, it still can be hard to let go of our role and all the perks associated with the job–like those Christmas card photos. (Imagine how you would feel if your mom suddenly pulled the plug on a tradition you weren’t quite ready to give up yet, like unceremoniously ditching the stockings.)
We all know we won’t get completely phased out—we’ll still always be your parents. But transitions can be challenging. And when you’re all back together for the holidays, it’s easy for a parent to believe it’s like the olden days again.
When you’re in unfamiliar territory, clinging to traditions can be comforting. Maybe you can relate to the unease of a significant life change, like adjusting to a new job, roommate, or city.
So cut Mom and/or Dad a little slack. A little grace goes a long way. You could propose a variation that allows a tradition to evolve into something new. Or you can suggest a new tradition that helps your parents feel like your family bonds will endure even though you’re all grown up.
Though I am at peace with the end of our family’s Christmas card photo tradition, our cards still feel a little emptier than they used to be. But I try to remind myself of all the good parts about celebrating Baby Jesus’ birthday. To everything, there is a season. Hopefully, one day before I know it, my daughters will be arguing with their own teenagers about Christmas card photos.
The Christmas Card became the bane of my existence. My mother would go with me to a specialty invitation shop to order ridiculously expensive stationary cards, I would pay for a photo shoot on the beach so all our family in NY could be jealous of our Florida lifestyle. My mother would shame me in hand addressing 115 cards, Christmas stamps. It was an expensive, time consuming tradition that I found stressful. My mother’s tradition was never that fun for me - and a lot of stress. As social media became the prominent way to share pictures of my sons growing up -daily vs once a year, I came to question why I needed a card. My adult sons were not cooperative at all, and during Covid I just stopped. I never wrote a note explaining it as you did which was a great idea but it was so freeing to let it go. Was I a bad daughter and mother letting a “tradition” go? I always had guilt over it. I was doing it for my mother’s expectations but not for my happiness and along with many other “traditions” that I did all the work but didn’t matter or were appreciated by others. Letting that card go became the first step in holiday peace. I now think about traditions are meant to evolve with each generation, they aren’t mandatory. This way the guilt and often resentment doesn’t build. And yes, my mother mailed out her Christmas card of her and my father right after Thanksgiving. For her it’s a reinforcement that she matters. And that’s okay for her, it’s not one I need.
I so enjoy reading your stories. You have so much warmth and humor. Dominic and I had no children but every year we would take a photo wearing our Christmas hats and send those out instead. But the unique thing is, we would have taken the photo in the summer, somewhere on our travels. We had one in Venice in a gondola, one in Ronda, Spain wearing ridiculous flamenco costumes, one in Singapore. Everyone had their favorites. Some people collected them, or so they told us. So, needless to say, when Dominic died in Nov ember 2015, that tradition stopped. Oops, so sorry if this comment has turned sad. Didn't mean it to.