Taking the Happy Out of Holidays

With all the media hype about keeping Christ in Christmas, I can't resist the temptation to post about my own deletion of merry from our festive holiday season. It happens every year around this time. It's a tradition. We do it because...I say so.

It's as much a part of our lives as Dad's ritual every Sunday morning when he piles our beloved into the car...in their pajamas (they love that) and hauls them off to the donut store for Gargantuan cinnamon rolls, sprinkly doughnuts, and the morning newspaper. It's all good. Dad naturally gets the "Greatest Dad" award and I get "The Meanest Drill Sargent Alive" award. I'll take it. I guess.

What's that old saying? If the shoe fits, wear it. Sometimes I don't understand why so many of the shoes around here only fit my feet. Shoes in the laundry room, shoes in the kitchen, shoes beside the toilet, shoes next to the mop bucket. Yep, all my size. Go figure. With such a variety of foot coverings at my disposal, along with the onset of Christmas (00ps, I meant holiday) celebrations lurking around every corner, I decided it was high time I laced up my combat boots and prepared myself for enemy fire as I headed into my own private little war to stir up some of that sweet holiday chaos that's so popular this time of year.

And so the day was born. With my six-shirt line-up on the living room couch, I barked out the orders to my little grunts that we were taking family pictures. I took the necessary precautions to insure my safety and found cover behind the kitchen cabinets in order to dodge the bullets that began to fly. "What? No donuts this morning?" "We have to wear these?" "It's freezing outside." "When are we going to eat?" It's always a pretty picture way before we even get one foot out the front door towards the specified war zone.

But I always have the last word. In-house, that is. My little insurgents don't give up that easy. They know that wannabe snapshooters don't wear camouflage and certainly don't carry bifocals in their camera bags. Theirs is the strategy unseasoned photographers like myself have the divine privilege of experiencing first-hand...it's down right sabotage.

I had thirty minutes, TOPS, to snap nineteen shots amid the launches of their personal hand grenades. I didn't realize the potential for willfulness this year until I loaded the pics onto my computer and saw the protruding tongue in number 10. Oh, look. Someone got their hand blown off. Hey, that's me standing behind them, clueless. Thanks, I love you, too.

They look so smug, don't they? And this one? Send in the reinforcements, she's a dead giveaway.

Okay, Honey, please try and stay focused.

It only takes one and I won. Don't think I didn't make them do 20 on the gravel as soon as we got home. Good thing it wasn't raining, otherwise, it might have taken them a little longer to spread some more of that Christmas...I mean...holiday cheer.