A Golden Treasury Of Awkward/Weird/Awesome Family Holiday Photos

Is there anything more representative of the American holiday tradition than the taking of family holiday photos? I think not! These sort of pictures never seem to fail to capture the angst, the stress and the profound absurdity of the holidays. I'm convinced that whoever coined the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words" was looking at a family holiday photo when he or she did so. They just convey so damn much.

And every family takes them. Every year. There's no escaping it, no getting around it -- if you're at grandma's house for Christmas as some point between the main course and dessert a tipsy aunt will whip out a camera and demand that everyone gather around the tree to pose for a picture. This is when I usually go to take a crap or something.

So I spent some time this afternoon digging around in the massive, hilarious archives of Awkward Family Photos, along with other parts of the web, and culled together a collection of family holiday pics that caught my eye for one reason or another. Collectively, they reflect the best and worst of all of us -- our hopes, our dreams, our fears -- for we are these people. Or something like that. Regardless, enjoy.