Smile, Madison! PLEASE Smile!

[plumtreeblossom]

Here's my belated holiday find of the day:

GALLERY OF SOBBING CHILDREN ON SANTA'S LAP


I have no idea why people do this to their kids. If I had children, I would never make them do this if they didn't want to, and I wouldn't care which Santa-photo-insisting-upon relatives I pissed off because of it. Someone will have to explain to me the keepsake value of sadistic-y portraits of this nature. "Merry Christmas! We subjected our toddler to a 3-minute odyssey of agonizing psychological torture to bring you this photographic memento of holiday joy!"


I think I see where life-long Christmas phobics come from...

Comments

[joyeous.livejournal.com]

Absolutely hilarious. You have to hope these were the pictures that were thrown out and somebody didn't actually pay money for these and then actually send them to people.

I feel so sorry for the Santas that have to go through this every year. I wonder if they're all secretly like Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa and have flasks hidden inside their velvet jackets.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

David Sedaris has a very funny piece about this in his Santaland Diaries, where he chronicles a season working as an elf in a department store Santaland. The parents will coax, cajole and threaten their weeping child into forcing a fake grimace that's supposed to pass for a smile, and for some reason they're satisfied with this and buy the photo. Might as well photograph your child shrieking through a round of vaccinations and booster shots (which I'm sure some people do). Poor kiddos.

[wellstar.livejournal.com]

This is a spectacular link; thank you for sharing it.

My favorite, hands-down, is sat17. I can only hope that the parent(s) of those children had the good sense (of humor) to turn that into their holiday card for the year. The combination of children being children and Santa's expression is truly a classic.

Poor Santas.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I think you'd really have to be a good actor for that job. It would take nerves of steel not to toss the last-straw child on the floor and yell "That's it, NOBODY'S getting ANYTHING for Christmas!"

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

You know, some of these are the most macro-worthy photos I've ever seen. :-)

*ponders evil deeds*

[smacaski.livejournal.com]

I always hated sitting in Santa's lap. I think after one or two tries, my mom wisely gave up. Now, the Easter Bunny on the other hand... I just hope the guy in that suit wasn't a pervert, because I'd jump right into his lap.

And the Santa in the sat6 picture has a priceless look of long-sufferance. Like, "How many more years until I die and don't have to do this every Christmas to make extra money to buy my wife something nice?" And the TH8 Santa looks like he belongs in a horror movie.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

As a young tot, I was terrified of anything that looked quasi-human: clowns, Santa, people in Easter Bunny or other animal suits, people in masks of any kind. Good thing Barney wasn't around back in my day. I know there's at least one baby photo of me screaming on Santa's lap. I was never a very cooperative early childhood photographic model! (But hell, I had my reasons!)

[smacaski.livejournal.com]

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<i.I was never a very cooperative early childhood photographic model!</i>

Ditto. My family once went to get the family portrait done. They tried, for what must have been over an hour, to get me to smile. I didn't smile for strangers, even if my parents were around. We eventually just had the picture taken with my frowny puss, then my mother took the photo to a painter and asked him/her to paint the photo, only this time to give me a smile. Nowadays she'd just have my dad digitally alter the photo, but this was 20 years ago.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

That's hilarious that she took it to a painter! I'm trying to imagine how that would have come out looking...

[smacaski.livejournal.com]

From what I recall, it came out pretty well, although it wasn't my real smile s/he painted. Mom just wanted something she could send to her parents that didn't make their granddaughter look like a grouch.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

I was hoping maybe some of these are cases where the children were totally enthusiastic, DESPERATE to see Santa in fact, right up to the point where they actually have to sit on Santa's lap... I still wouldn't make my kid do it, but I could be sympathetic to the parent who's just spent 2.5 hours in line grimly insisting that the kid can't back out NOW.

Though the anecdotes in comments here do seem to imply that for many kids, they never wanted to be there, period.

I seem to recall that I always wanted to sit on Santa's lap, but my parents refused as it was a pointless waste of money... I think. It's possible we did it a few times and I forgot (I would have been very young), but I don't have any memories of doing it with my younger siblings either, and there certainly aren't any photos.

This is not something that bothers me, now. :)

[androidqueen.livejournal.com]

I was wondering the same thing. I can totally imagine maintaining the attitude of "Well, you made me stand in that damn line all day. You're getting this fucking photo taken." :)

I seem to remember wanting to see Santa as well, but I don't really remember doing it much. Vague childhood memories.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Particularly if they made you pay first.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

As I got older, I wanted to go, even though I never bought the whole Santa Claus ticket (but pretended to). By the age of 5 or so I had decided that getting my picture taken was way cool.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

My mother never believed that I had any thoughts or feelings of my own; she insisted that Of Course I was feeling whatever she would feel in the same circumstances. I can well imagine her telling me that I wanted to sit on Santa's lap and not believing me if I said that I didn't.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

My mom had that same problem with her mother that you had with yours. She didn't want to mother that way when she grew up, so when I came along she acknowledged that my thoughts and feelings were usually different than hers, but she considered it her duty to try and change my mind. It took a while, but she eventually accepted that that wasn't going to work.

Poor Mom... I gave her no privacy whatsoever. When, at age 5, I confronted her with my angry doubts about Santa's authenticity, the poor woman was...on the toilet.

[msjann65.livejournal.com]

There must be something wrong with the kids in my extended family. I cannot think of one who actually cried on Santa's lap. My youngest son was a bit leery of the whole thing, but after walking back and forth a few times around the fence surrounding Santa, he ventured forth to spend what seemed like a very long time telling the old man his entire life's wishes! I was very bold and brave when small, and only cried when I had to surrender The Lap to another kid.
By the way, they could not pay me enough to take a job like Santa! Screaming kids all day! Hot suit in a hot department store or wherever. Nope! Not for me.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you and your son were quite the extroverts as children! I imagine that if I watched a Santa for a few hours and took a tally of kids' reactions, I'd probably have more happy kids than screamers. But seeing the screamers all collected in a gallery like that makes it seem like a trial by fire!

In my early 20s, when I was working assorted crap jobs, I thought it would be fun to be the elf girl who took the photos. I never got a chance to find out, but now I don't want to know. :-)

[moria923.livejournal.com]

When I was young, the Braille Institute in LA used to host these Christmas "parties" where they'd have a bunch of celebs come in and perform, and then Santa would come and pass out presents. To me the celeb program was a little boring, but I'd come home with a present, so I guessed it was worth it.

Anyway, one day Raymond Burr was one of the guests, and my parents wanted to get a picture of me sitting on his lap. I wasn't interested, but they still insisted. Years later, instead of wondering about my point of view, Mom said critically, "You didn't want to sit on Raymond Burr's lap!)