I really wanted to get a family picture done this year, but 2020 in its typical fashion decided this wasn’t the year. It has been quite a few years since we had a “real” one done, and it looks like it will be at least one more before I can make it happen. I’ll settle for the goofy group shot when we go to get our Christmas tree. Also missing this year will be any photos with Santa. I have always counted on the cheesy mall Santa photos to remind me that the kids can go out of the house looking nice and behaving long enough to get a group picture.

When they were younger, I spent hours putting together meticulously coordinated outfits. As they’ve gotten older, I was forced to lower my standards and just be happy that they had clothes on that weren’t yesterday’s pajamas. In part because of the hecticness of the season and in part because when I make plans, God laughs, our “annual” Santa pictures usually involve calling around to see which mall Santa is still open at 3:30 on Christmas Eve.

Over the years, this became an unofficial tradition. It became my jumping off point where I gave up on whatever small jobs weren’t done yet, got the kids cleaned up and dressed, and spent a half-hour driving to a mall and 5 minutes waiting in line. Then we spent 15 more minutes trying to get everyone to look at the camera, and then zipped back home again so the Wonderful Husband and I could pull on our Christmas clothes and head to church.

Last year, however, I read the website wrong and we arrived 20 minutes after Santa had jumped in his sleigh to headed back to the North Pole. Neither of the boys cared very much. It was, quite frankly, a relief. E was a little more disappointed, but still more entertained at her spinny dress and how slippery her dress shoes were on the tile floor. I, on the other hand, was crushed. It was one of my major mom fail moments. For the first time ever, my kids didn’t get to sit on Santa’s lap. At the rate things were going, I expected them to have their driver’s licenses and be moving into their own apartments before the new year.

One of them finally noticed that I was in the end stages of a complete breakdown, and clued the other two in. Missing Santa wasn’t such a big deal, but Mom, currently crying buckets in the middle of the mall, two hours before church, on Christmas Eve was definitely a problem. While I’m pretty sure the WH was looking around for anything that would pass as a Santa costume so we could just fake the picture and get the heck out of there, the kids were trying to figure out what was wrong with me.

Eventually, they deciphered my incoherent ramblings and E assured me that she had in fact seen Santa, just a few weeks earlier at my work Christmas party, and she was absolutely sure that he would still remember the 56 things on her list. That reminded me of a few years when the kids made grand requests that were definitely not on their Christmas lists before they saw Santa, and just hours before he was due at our house.

I distinctly remembered the look on Santa’s face when these updates were announced. I’m pretty sure Santa already had something else packed into the sleigh for them, and some quick calls had to be made back home to the elves. So, maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing after all. Besides, G piped up, maybe now we could go home and eat dinner before we went to church, so he didn’t have to starve while we sat through the Nativity story.

I was still a bit glum on the ride home, and the kids sensed that something was up. As we pulled into the driveway, E presented me with a drawing that she had made of our entire family visiting Santa. (The fact that we had enough art supplies in the back of the car that she could draft a five-person portrait in under half an hour is another subject for another time.)

It was a scene only a 9-year-old could have drawn, complete with all our Christmas finery on, and as she pointed out, it was even better than our actual picture, because she included the WH and me, and we never got our pictures taken before. (I need a minute here, because, I’m not sure how, but I’m actually crying harder now thinking about it that I did when she gave it to me.)

I’ve kept that drawing handy over the past year. It’s folded up in my “schedule/bills to pay/all important school papers that I need right now” catch-all file. There are days when I just needed to remember what an epic failure I felt like, and how touched I was when E came through to save Christmas for me. Missing a Santa pic in the lose column was infinitely overshadowed by having a kind, thoughtful, caring kid in the win column. I couldn’t have asked for a better present.

I didn’t know that at the time, but that will probably be the last picture with Santa that I will ever attempt to orchestrate. We’re staying home this year, and by next year, I’m guessing that unless some heavy bribery is involved, I’m probably not getting two teenagers and a precocious 11-year-old back to the mall. I hope I’m wrong, but let’s be realistic. Even if I manage to con them into it, they won’t be able to keep their eye rolls out of the picture.

E’s picture is a constant reminder to me of how no matter how much I plan and count on things to be a certain way and try to control everything, things can still go off the rails. But even after a complete derailment, it’s possible that your final destination is even better than your original plan.

Christmas this year won’t be anything like we’ve planned. It won’t fit neatly into the frame with all the other perfect Christmases that we’ve coordinated and executed beautifully. It will still manage to be memorable and beautiful in its own way.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.