Doc Amsden’s Christmas Cards

My father began his tradition of producing a personalized Christmas card for the family in the mid-Forties. A tradition that he continued until the early Seventies. A Doctor of Osteopathy, he was as well an amateur photographer who took his hobby quite seriously. He worked hard to produce a smart card to showcase his talent. For the benefit of his camera buds, friends, professional associates, and patients. And, of course, for his own satisfaction. He was proud of his efforts.

Creating a Christmas card was a process that began in the Late Fall. He settled on a concept, worked it up and then set a production schedule for himself. For many years, not only did he arrange and shoot the image, he printed it in quantity. I remember his last darkroom setup in the basement of our Don Mills home. The locations of the previous ones I can only surmise. They must have been the kitchen because we lived in apartments. He had a Leica enlarger, that much I remember.

During the Fifties he kept to one card style. He dry-mounted to the front of the card a black and white image that was printed on thick photographic paper. The cards endure in good shape.The card stock is heavily textured and cream-coloured. My mother was dragooned into mailroom duties when the time came for addressing the envelopes and sticking on the stamps.

Inside the card, engraved, a formal script reads ” With every Sincere Wish for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Dr. and Mrs. Edwin Amsden.” Damn formal and dry then, more so now. The joy, the fun of the season, was all in his pictures.

It certainly wasn’t in the experience of producing the Christmas card. The “Old Man” as he referred to himself in relation to his children, turned us  — his chief models — into whiners. We learned from personal experience what the word, “exasperated” meant. Mother told us we were that. Told us not to be so. “Work it, Baby!” with him was, “Let’s do this again.” He was by his own admission, “a perfectionist.”

There were occasional tears for the poor, beleaguered sods that had to dress up and take his commands. Poor us! But we survived, and were proud to be front and centre each year.

During the Fifties the influence of tradition can be seen in his images. When the Sixties arrived, the Old Man got into a shtick that focused on “a deadpan expression.” Instructing his models to appear blasé would elicit a droll response was his reason. He liked to take his styling cues from the trends of the day and that was one of the ways he interpreted them.

Towards the end of the Sixties, he ran “out of steam.” His words. He displayed store-produced colour prints of his Camera Club shots in place of family photos. His models had grown up. Moved away. He was never one to use any old pic from the family photo album.

I find fun in this record. I hope you do, too. Best of the Season!

I am sooooo cute! Look at all the hair! And the picture of me napping … what  foresight The Old Man had about the man I would become!

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