Christmas card family photos: The tips, the tricks, the memories, the agony

For many people – perhaps especially in camera crazy Rochester – Thanksgiving is not just about the turkey, the stuffing, the apple pie.

No, it’s also about the picture taken on Thanksgiving that will become the Christmas or holiday picture, an image suitable for sending to cousins, high school classmates, and just about everyone you may not have seen for a decade.

Everyone in the pictures should look happy to be there. But let’s be honest. The photo sessions can be difficult, a strain on family harmony. Blame the kids. One time a year they’re asked to do something. Just one time. They whine. They squirm. They look cross-eyed, make strange signs. It’s rough.

Amy Wegman Forsythe of Hilton, who is 53, knows the Christmas picture well. As she writes in a wonderful essay titled “Aerosol, Angst & Apple Pie,” she learned at the feet of a master, her mother, Ann Wegman, 79, also of Hilton. (Clarification: They’re a different Wegman family, not part of the Wegman’s Food Market clan.)

Like the film director, Cecil B. DeMille, Ann Wegman knew, and still knows, how to manage a crowd scene. Every Thanksgiving she would be preparing the meal, not just any meal, a Thanksgiving meal.

Then she would step away from the prep and, using stern or sweet persuasion, whatever was needed, she would get her nine (yes, nine) children into the picture frame. Snap. It was done. Let the Thanksgiving chaos continue.

Family photos on Christmas cards become time capsules

Ann Wegman is certainly not alone. Other mothers, fathers, aunts, and uncles have fashioned holiday cards. In fact, online apps and smart phone cameras have made the task easier. Printed somewhere in the cloud, the cards arrive, ready to be mailed out.

Stored away, the cards are time capsules. There’s Mary just a little girl; there’s Mary off the college.

The cards show additions to the core family unit, girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, grandchildren. New pets come along, replacing old pets. They’re given center stage in recognition of their importance.

Organizing family photos can be 'an absolute nightmare'

The photo tradition for the Wegmans began when Ann and her husband, Phil, had just two children, Amy and her older sister, Jenny. That was easy. The infants were young, cooperative, cute. As other children came along, the choreography got more and more difficult, in part because not all the dancers (the kids) wanted to dance.

“It was nightmare, an absolute nightmare to try and get them to do a picture,” Ann Wegman says. “Every year it got worse and worse.”

How much worse? “One year one of the kids (Philip) shaved his head just before the picture,” Ann says.

Ann was stunned. She looked at Philip and saw her bald father, her bald brothers. Far before his time, the kid had morphed into his grandfather, his uncles. What’s a mother do?

Oh, the big hair on 80's family photos

Amy Forsythe looks back at her childhood and recalls her own mood at picture time. She was “grumpy.” The photo session was “dreaded.”

But the kids knew that they were supposed to look their best, a house rule that the girls, especially, took seriously.

“The main concern was how high we could tease our hair,” Amy writes.

“It was an added bonus if we were able to tease it wide as well,” she continues. “Even though our shared bathroom was upstairs, a giant cloud of hairspray inevitably drifted downstairs and mingled with the smells of cinnamon applesauce and sweet potatoes. My Dad would wrinkle his nose and not so gently remind us that our aerosol was slowly killing the atmosphere.”

The hair in all its glory was captured in the 1989 photo of the children. There’s Timmy in the front row. Behind him in the middle row are the five Wegman sisters. At either end of that row are the twins, Carrie on the left, Meg on the right.

Then in the middle from left to right are Amy, Jenny, and Susan. Their hair is wide and high, aerosol having done its work. In the back row are Jay, Philip and Andy, Philip having not shaved his head on this occasion.

Ann Wegman realized that timing was everything when it came to the photo. Basically, the camera came out before the meal. No picture, no turkey.

“The length of time it took to get the perfect picture was in direct relation to how long it took to get my brothers to sit up straight, keep their hands to themselves, and smile,” Amy reports. ”Sometimes we ate at 2 p.m. Sometimes we ate after sunset.”

The family Christmas card photo is a rite of passage

The Wegman children grew up, started their own families, perhaps couldn’t make it to the large family gathering. Ann Wegman took a picture no matter who showed up.

“We’ve never missed a year,” she says. “We have them all in albums. We continue to take the picture. Sometimes it would be with a grandchild, sometimes with a pet we happened to adopt.”

However, old habits die hard. On any given Thanksgiving, all of her now adult children take Thanksgiving/Christmas family pictures at their own homes.

Yes, the children who squirmed, complained, made faces, and generally drove their mother crazy when they were young and the subjects of the picture, have grown up to make their own children endure the Thanksgiving picture.

“The tradition of the dreaded family photo continues,” Amy Forsythe explains. “Each of my eight siblings and I subject our children to the same orchestrated torture. Why? Because it’s a rite of passage. We want them to feel our pain. And they do. But only for 15 minutes.”

Traditions: A scorned salad and the Thanksgiving family photos

After the photoshoots at their individual homes, everyone who can – spouses and children in tow – head off to Thanksgiving dinner at Ann and Phil’s house.

It’s a mob scene, about 40 people on a good day, the eating made possible because the adult Wegman children bring dishes to pass.

Amy Forsythe contributes a Waldorf salad (apples, grapes, celery, etc.) She enjoys the salad. Few others do. In fact, they make fun of her salad.

Will she keep bringing the Waldorf despite the negative reviews? Of course, she replies. It’s a Thanksgiving tradition now, and like all Thanksgiving traditions, including the picture, it’s not subject to change.

From his home in Geneseo, Livingston County, retired senior editor Jim Memmott writes Remarkable Rochester, who we were, who we are. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com or write Box 274, Geneseo, NY 14454.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Christmas card family photos: The tips, the tricks, the agony