This is our annual reprise celebrates the upcoming traditional pics with Santa at the Fair Haven Firehouse and continues our hunt for those classic pics of miserable children not enduring their mandatory torturous visit with Santa very well at all. Send us YOUR miserable children on Santa’s lap photos! Email them to [email protected]. We’re checking our list and waiting!

Sometimes no matter how hard you try, that classic Santa pic with the kids just goes terribly awry. And we’re pretty sure that this Sunday’s visits with Santa at the Fair Haven Firehouse will be no exception.

The kids are either transfixed by the giant red-suited stranger with a giant white hillbilly beard, they run screaming (who wouldn’t?) or they just can’t contain their tears of fear.

Those who have managed to get the kids to sit on the plump masked stranger’s lap for that classic Christmas photo have ended up with another sort of classic — the picture of a miserable child all dressed up with nowhere to cry but on Saint Nick’s lap!

We know it seems a bit sadistic, but it is adorably funny to take a gander at these pics to get into that humorous holiday spirit. You really have to laugh a little at those trying days gone by of wrangling with the unreasonable notion of getting restless unwitting child to pose with a scary man who they know is going to invade their home one night soon, eat their cookies and leave.

It’s no wonder why kids cry at the sight of him. The smiles come with the thought of presents, though. It’s all priceless.

So, in the spirit of those expressions of holiday love and horror and all the pricelessness that comes with them, the Retro Pic of the Day sporadically until Christmas will feature these little ones, knowing that it was all done for the love of Christmas and the old memory treasure chest.

This photo was sent by longtime Fair Havenite Evie Connor Kelly. It’s her two children,  Bill and Mary Ellen at the Fair Haven Firehouse circa 1987.

Awwwww. Mary Ellen is fine now, folks, Evie assures us.

Send us your treasured “miserable child” with Santa pics. Smile. Santa’s on his way!  Email your photos to [email protected].

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