Scared of Santa?

Tis the season for photos of young one's the world over perched upon Santa Claus' lap. I did it myriad times as a youngster (by the way Mommily, where are all those photos anyhow?), my own children have done it year after year, and next year we will indeed take Gidget and plop her down on the jolly fat man in red's lap and have a few photos snapped.

I think as parents we all walk into the mall (or wherever there happens to be a Santa handy) thinking about smiling cherub-like faces, sat upon Santa's knee whilst gleefully telling him their entire hearts desire. I know when I started taking my kids, the popular image below is one of the more ideal scenario's I'd imagined would take place when placing my offspring upon Santa's plentiful lap.

Well reality often trumps the fancies of a young mother's imagination and more often than not, my darlings ended up being flat-out terrified of Santa Claus - when it came time for a face to face anyhow. Oh don't get me wrong, if we were in the comfort of our own home then they were very excited about the prospect of a strange man dressed in red velvet squeezing his way down our less than ample chimney in order to leave them bright shiny packages and goodies.

And it never failed, every time that we'd wake up on the day we'd designated as "Photos With Santa" day, everything would start out well enough. There was usually a lot of excitement and the kids almost always cooperated when it came to getting dressed and staying nice and neat. Well, most of the time anyhow. We did go through a phase when my twins were younger, still toddlers, when Matt and Meg would try and rip each other to shreds. And I can tell you no matter how many bows I would end up taping to Meg's gorgeous little bald head, her twin brother Matt would promptly yank it off and either tear apart, eat it, or hide it from her.

Anyhow, they thankfully moved past that stage and Meg being much like her Mom moved into her "vain stage" fairly early.

Once we'd get to the mall though and within eyesight of Santa, something changed. Happy smiling faces became somewhat uncertain. The kids would almost always look up at us with a slightly questioning expression and then grasp our hands for reassurance.

And as evidenced by the photo below, taken in 1997 when the twins were just shy of being 8 and Zack was 4, the finished product was never ever anything resembling the Coca Cola ad above.

Matt looks a tad like a deer caught in the headlights and Meg is captured with a beautiful imitation of her Mother's; "I'm seriously pissed off and you're not getting out of this alive" expression, and then there's my baby, Zack who wants absolutely nothing to do with any of it and just wants to get away from the scary man in the red suit. But note how tightly he's gripping that Candy Cane. That's my boy...if he's going to be scared witless he'd best be getting something out of it. Something tells me he may have inherited my fear of clowns.

Scenes like this are all too often played out in malls across the world every day. And I even found a website devoted entirely to the less than flattering results of Photos With Santa.

What makes some of these pictures so incredibly hilarious is that sometimes Santa himself looks less than pleased. Actually, in a few of them, he looks like he's had a few too many spiked egg-nogs or has been smokin' some mistletoe.

http://www.southflorida.com/events/sfl-scaredsanta,0,2245506.photogallery?coll=sfe-events-headlines&index=1

But it is ultimately the looks of abject terror, horror and fear which makes the photos so amusing.

So enjoy the photos from the site above. And here's to looking towards next year with anticipation and hope that Gidget likes her time spent perched upon Santa Claus' lap.