The first Christmas

The present that lasts

A first Christmas toy lasts six months. What lasts is what was kept.

• A Christmas letter written by each of the parents, put away for her eighteenth birthday.
• A tree decoration with the year written on it. Every year a new one arrives, and in twenty years the tree tells the whole story.
• A book with a dedication and a date.

The photo

• Tree lights behind, window light on the face. No flash: the flash wipes out the little lights.
• A photo in the same corner of the house, every year. In five years it becomes the sequence everyone stops to look at.
• The photo of the whole family, with a tripod or the timer. Every year someone is missing from the photos, and it is almost always whoever was holding the phone.

Realistic expectations

A baby at Christmas usually falls asleep, finds the noise strange or cries during dinner. None of that is a problem, and all of it makes a good photo. Do not force a smile for the camera: the sleepy face of the first Christmas is funnier twenty years from now than a smile that had to be dragged out.