When the holidays come around, many of us can expect a Christmas card from our loved ones. And while it’s nice to see their family’s smiling faces, most of them aren’t all that memorable.
Let’s be honest, if someone asked you to describe the Christmas card they sent you two years ago, you’d probably draw a blank, right?
Well, with this family, you’d actually have a chance of figuring out whether it was the one where they looked all sunburned or the one where Mike did that really creepy smile.
Yeah, that one.
When they stick in our minds like these ones do, they give us something to look forward to.
The Bergeron family began their tradition of wacky, awkward Christmas cards back in 2003.
As they say on their website , they were just a couple who entered their 30s at the time and wanted to try something quirky for their Christmas card.
So Mike and Laura here decided to act like they were having mid-life crises with fake hair plugs and pretend breast implants (not pictured).
For next year’s romp, they decided to use the JC Penney Portrait Studio, where nobody, apparently, batted an eye at this image.
Not to worry, Mike said Laura wasn’t actually pregnant at the time. Not that that stopped the weirdly non-judgmental manager from hoping that they take their baby pictures in the same studio.
For this one, they decided to go with a “your aunt and uncle who live in the Midwest” theme.
Which, yes, is an oddly specific theme, but it would be hard not to feel a little proud if your friends literally couldn’t tell this apart from the actually awkward cards those distant relatives send.
For this particular shoot, Mike said he decided to embrace his inevitable baldness.
Since hair loss runs in his family, he knew one day it would be his turn to live the chrome-dome life. So, at age 32, he decided there was no better time than Christmas card season to break out the razor.
“On the afternoon of the photo shoot, I had Laura shave the hair off the top of my head,” he revealed. “And I’ve been bald ever since.”
It wasn’t until their fourth year trying this that the Bergerons went where many of us fear to tread: The awkwardness of our pasts.
A lot of us would see this version of ourselves in our Facebook memories and go on a massive deletion spree, but Mike and Laura obviously took it as inspiration for their “Blunder Years” card.
By 2007, Laura and Mike started to get a little more ambitious.
Not only did they admit to using (gasp) Photoshop for this one, but they set their sights on an American classic with this take on “American Gothic.”
Come to think of it, that farmer and his daughter always did look kind of awkward as they stood there.
Mike admitted they hadn’t planned on resorting to using Photoshop for that year’s card.
In fact, they’d actually dressed up in costumes and took photos with pitchforks, but their results didn’t even come close to the O.G.:
“Since the original work was done with paint on canvas and did not look like a real-life photo, we felt it would be a better choice to manipulate our photo to look like the painting.”
In 2008, the pair used their holiday card tradition to spread some “Krishnas” joy to the world.
Mike admitted this one was taken much later in the season than the others, which meant a long line up at JC Penney, which meant having to kill an entire hour at their local mall while dressed like this . Suffice it to say, they got some looks.
Mike’s only regret? “I wish that we had brought flowers.”
For their next trick, the Bergerons went with an homage to the past.
Namely, those awkward family portraits from the early ’80s that found their way on the internet to delight us all 20-30 years later.
This was also the first Christmas card to feature their daughter, Gigi, who was, luckily, making an appropriately silly face. Welcome to the family.
By 2011, little Gigi had already hit her stride as a part of this family tradition.
Mike said that the unibrow theme didn’t turn out quite how he would’ve liked because the recession at the time didn’t leave them with much of a budget to fulfill their ambitions, but it fits the over-arching concept all the same.
By next year’s portrait, the Bergerons would have another daughter nicknamed Juju B.
And her clear confusion at what’s going on actually fit that year’s goth theme pretty well.
After all, her reaction doesn’t look out of place next Mike’s horror at the ravages of existence and Laura and Gigi’s defeated indifference to it.
After this, the family would do a full 180 from brooding goths to perky jazzercise fans.
Well, all of them except Juju, who was obviously having none of this. Also, it’s apparently pretty miraculous that they got a picture of Gigi with that wig on because she only let them put it on her for about 30 seconds.
By 2015, the Bergerons had transformed into “Les Bergerons” for this trendy, European edition.
And if the $850 price tag Mike quoted is real, so are those Gucci shoes. So hopefully, this card went over very well because that is one expensive joke.
In 2017, the Bergeron family’s ambitions took them away from JC Penney’s portrait studio and to the beach.
After all, it was the only place that their “Gingers in Paradise” theme would’ve made much sense. And it really captures the struggle of trying to enjoy the sunshine with pale skin.
For last year’s outing, the Bergerons introduced us to “The West Texans.”
The girls had perfect pageant smiles, but it’s Mike’s incredibly creepy smile that truly steals the show here. Toddlers & Tiaras always kinda creeped me out, but not as much as that.
Unfortunately, it suddenly became unclear what was going to happen in 2019 since there didn’t appear to be a new card.
At the time, neither Mike nor any other member of his family appeared to have teased anything on social media.
And going to their website wasn’t much help because at the time of this writing, it doesn’t seem to be working.
At the time, we hoped it was just a bug and not a sign that we’ve seen the end of this hilarious annual tradition.
Fortunately, it turns out that the streak wasn’t broken and the Bergerons did in fact come together with a card in 2019.
And as Mike wrote on Facebook, this year’s outing had significant input from the children.
Although he had thought of dressing as a bookie who looked like he belonged in Uncut Gems , it’s was actually his daughter Gigi’s idea to give her character a goth-inspired look. It added some dynamism to the colors on display and made this seem more like a family that could really exist.
As seems appropriate for 2020, the Bergeron family sought to look to a year with as little to do with this one as possible for their inspiration for this year’s card.
As Mike wrote on Facebook, it all started with the toupee we can see on his head. From there, he thought back to the bizarre family photos of decades past and wanted to emulate the “floating head” look you would sometimes see in them.
And since this was a year that saw the return of the bowl cut, it seemed as good a time as any to harken back to the days when parents gave their children those haircuts for reasons besides quarantining.
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But even if this all ended in 2018, however, the Bergerons would have still already given us plenty to love.
So while I’m definitely hoping to see another awkward photo next year, it would be enough just to hear that everything’s going OK.
Happy holidays!
