Holiday Photos That Went Spectacularly Wrong

Holiday photos gone wrong! A family portrait that ended up in a Prague shop window, a prank with a fictional household, and a baby photo shoot that became a tradition.

Every December, families participate in one of the season’s most optimistic traditions: gathering several people, possibly a pet, occasionally a toddler, and expecting everyone to look happy at exactly the same time.

Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Holiday photos are supposed to preserve the magic. Coordinated clothes. Cheerful smiles. Children who appear delighted to be standing near their siblings. Dogs who suddenly understand the concept of eye contact.

What the finished photo rarely shows is the chaos happening just outside the frame. Someone is sweating. Someone is hungry. A child has decided pants are optional. The dog has vanished. One adult is quietly wondering why they agreed to this.

And sometimes, the photo doesn’t just go a little wrong.

Sometimes it ends up advertising groceries in the Czech Republic.

The Christmas Card That Traveled Without Its Family

Danielle Smith, a mom in the St. Louis suburbs, did what countless families do every holiday season. She took a family photo, turned it into a Christmas card, and posted the image on her blog.

Perfectly normal.

Then it turned out that the photo had been enlarged to life size and put in the window of a shop in Prague. It was part of an ad for the store’s delivery service.

The Smiths had not agreed to become international grocery-store models. They hadn’t even known the photo was being used.

I’m trying to imagine what it’s like to hear something like, “Hey, weird question. Are you aware that your entire family is currently helping sell food in the Czech Republic?”

This may be the ultimate holiday-photo warning. You spend all that time getting everyone dressed and smiling, finally capture the picture, and somewhere across the Atlantic your Christmas card develops a career of its own.

The Disaster That Became the Tradition

Jonathan and Jessica Stanley were just trying to get a nice holiday photo with their new baby.

Instead, the baby cried. The wind picked up. The camera misfired. People blinked.

Basically, the photo shoot achieved everything except a usable family portrait.

So they sent the bad pictures.

Their relatives loved them.

And that failed photo session turned into something much better than another polished Christmas card. Since 2014, the Stanleys have staged chaotic holiday pictures on purpose every year.

Once you stop pretending the holidays are a Pottery Barn catalog, the possibilities really open up.

The Man Who Invented an Entire Family for His Christmas Card

Then there is Josh Brassow, a Michigan college student who decided in 2015 that a regular holiday prank simply wasn’t ambitious enough.

He hired actors to pose as his wife and children for a family Christmas photo.

The idea was to send the card to relatives and baffle them with the news that he had apparently acquired an entire secret family.

He even gave the fake children names, including Blade and Thor.

Because if you’re going to invent offspring, apparently you might as well commit.

The card started circulating on Twitter before some of his relatives had received it.

I admire the amount of unnecessary planning involved here.

Mud, Screaming and Other Holiday Classics

And then there are the smaller disasters, the ones probably happening in living rooms and backyards everywhere.

Toddlers who run into mud the moment everyone finally gets dressed.

Children who become furious when a parent suggests they show affection toward a sibling.

Pets who refuse to look at the camera.

Babies who scream through the only five-minute window when everyone else looks good.

Someone always blinks.

Someone always looks away.

And usually the person insisting “just one more” is lying.

Maybe the Bad Photos Are the Good Ones

Here’s the annoying thing about the perfect holiday photo: we all know it’s a performance.

That doesn’t make it bad. I love a beautiful family holiday card. Give me the coordinated outfits, twinkle lights, and suspiciously cooperative golden retriever.

But the pictures we actually remember are usually the ones where something went wrong.

The crying baby.

The mud.

The completely fabricated spouse.

So if your holiday photo shoot falls apart this year, maybe don’t delete everything immediately.

You could be looking at your best holiday card yet!