One of the best parts about the holidays is receiving an abundance of Christmas cards from family and friends. It’s always fun to see where their lives are going, especially when you don’t get to see them very often.
This ritual is made infinitely more entertaining when the Christmas cards are hilarious photos of your weirdest family members. At least, that’s what this family hopes for every year when they send out their amazingly awkward themed holiday cards.
Laura and Mike Bergeron have been creating hilariously awkward Christmas cards for the past 16 years.
“I can’t tell you if it was me or Laura who thought of it, or even if it evolved between the two of us joking back and forth, but somehow we came up with the idea to dress up like different characters and make their holiday card for everyone we knew,” Mike Bergeron told Bored Panda.
“It would be a way to show the people we loved that we were thinking about them during the holidays and also a way to make them smile amidst the chaos and stress of the season.”
Every year has its own unique theme…
2003: Forty & Fighting It
2004: We’re Dreaming of a White Trash Xmas
2005: Your Aunt & Uncle Who Live in the Midwest
2006: The Blunder Years
2007: American Gothic Xmas
2008: Merry Krishnas
2009: Los Cholos
2010: Olin Mills Family Portrait from 1981
2011: The Unibrows
2012: Goth Xmas
2013: Jazz Hands
2014: The Holidays Are Such a Drag
2015: Euro Trash
2016: Cussin Jerry nem
2017: Gingers in Paradise
And finally, 2018: “The West Texans”
While not everyone understood the concept at first, Mike says the family has come to expect these creative cards every year and even suggest ideas for future scenes.
“As our family grew, so grew the ideas about what we could do with the cards and the concept took on a whole new dimension,” Mike said. “We just kept sending them out, year after year, learning along the way that some cards were bigger hits than others, but also that each one contributed to a body of work that has become our family’s holiday tradition.”