The Slice: May the holiday season bring no breakups

A Slice reader shared a theory.

The way she sees it,  including your adult child’s fiancé or boyfriend/girlfriend in the family-photo Christmas card totally jinxes that relationship.

She has seen it happen. “I wish I had saved all those photos through the years,” said my correspondent, who asked that I not use her name.

She even went so far as to personally warn a friend against this practice. The advice was ignored and that year the friend’s family yule photo included a son’s girlfriend.

That couple soon broke up.

The young man in question went on to marry a woman who had not been in a family-photo Christmas card.

But is there really a cause-and-effect relationship here? Perhaps this is all just coincidence.

Or maybe my correspondent’s theory just scratches the surface. What if all sorts of details in family-photo Christmas card pictures are harbingers of what’s to come.

What does it all mean? Your guess is as good as mine. But I’ll start with 10 points of conjecture.

1. Families wearing matching reindeer sweaters experience nothing but euphoric, giddy good times for the next 12 months.

2. Persons who appear to be inebriated in the photo soon rise to leadership positions in Spokane.

3. Individuals wearing Santa hats lose 10 pounds before New Year’s.

4. Dogs in the picture receive in excess of 50,000 pats on the head in the coming year.

5. Babies in the photo subsequently hear from their agents about being cast to play the baby Jesus in a Christmas pageant.

6. Women wearing revealing outfits in the photo soon find themselves the subject of a “personality intervention.”

7. Preschoolers pretending to be Christmas dinosaurs grow up to be happy and successful.

8. Families wearing pajamas find themselves invited to join in reindeer games.

9. People who look angry in the photo find themselves psychoanalyzed by everyone on the mailing list.

10. Adults photographed beneath mistletoe will soon find themselves vigorously kissed by people who know how.

Today’s Slice question: What’s a sure sign that someone has finally grown up?