In my family, Christmas isn’t just a holiday … It’s an obsession. And my mother? She’s the matriarch of mistletoe.

Every December, our home transformed into a living snow globe. We didn’t just buy ornaments, we made them. We didn’t watch Christmas movies, we lived them. We’d cut down our own trees, hand-string popcorn garlands and spend full afternoons debating the correct angle of the angel on top of the tree.

But nestled inside all that holiday joy was one tiny annual trauma: the family photo.

This wasn’t just a casual snap on the stairs. No, no. This was a professional photoshoot. With outfits. And a booking. At Sears.

For those unfamiliar with American suburban customs in the 1990s, let me set the scene. Once a year, children across the country were dressed in matching red sweaters, dragged to department stores and forced to smile in front of beige backdrops while a man named Gary – who most definitely had a ponytail – snapped away with a camera the size of a microwave.

My mother took this annual production very seriously. We were her Christmas card, naturally. And her card was an........

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