It’s that time of year again, when parents inform their offspring that they’re being taken to meet a mystical bearded stranger who, if they’ve been good, has the potential to make all their dreams come true. Instead, these children find themselves face-to-face with a red-suited nightmare from which they want desperately to escape.

And when the often hilarious result is caught on camera, we want to give you the opportunity to share those moments with the world.

• Do your folks have great pics of that time you tried to rip the Big Guy’s beard off during a screaming fit?

• Did your child try to flee the premises immediately upon seeing jolly old St. Nick?

For example, here we have young Knox, whose mother Briana says was far from pleased to encounter Santa in New Jersey. “Why have you abandoned me to this fate?” his outstretched hand seems to say.

“Last year we took him to see Santa, he was all smiles,” Briana tells Consumerist, saying that she was a bit wary this year of how he’d react, seeing as he’s older and wiser, to “the strange man with lots of facial hair and dressed like a decorative pillow.”

Despite easing into it by taking a few group shots with older cousins, it was only a matter of time before Knox had Santa’s number.

“All was going well until he looked around and it was just the two of them,” Briana writes. “Let’s just say things went south fast.”

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