A Merry Maniacal Mannequin Christmas Story

This was going to be the year we would finish everything ahead of time.

Christmas shopping would be completed, wrapped and under the tree sometime before the week of the holiday. Christmas cards would be shot (by my wife the photographer), edited, printed and mailed in time to spend more than a few days as part of our friends’ and relatives’ annually displayed collections. Tree, lights and decorations would all be in place the day after Thanksgiving to allow for maximum enjoyment and inspiration of holiday spirit.

Ah yes. This was finally going to be that year.

We had all the best intentions…

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A week or two before Thanksgiving, my wife announced that this year she wanted to find and purchase an authentic, mid-century silver Christmas tree. Along with many other creative and artistic skills, she is an amazing interior designer, and she decided it was time to fulfill her wish for this classic minimalist vintage holiday look. So I jumped on eBay and within a day I won an auction for the tree of her dreams. I promptly paid and the tree was shipped the next day.

That’s when we first noticed it was coming from Canada.

Still, with a full month until Christmas, we expected the tree would be in our hands with at least three weeks to spare – plenty of time to enjoy the new addition to our traditions. On December 7^th the online shipment tracking updated to read “International shipment has reached the country of its destination.” A week later it still said the same thing. And the tree had not yet arrived.

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Every year, like many families, we take a family photo and send it as part of our Christmas card to friends and relatives. However, our tradition involves my wife’s photographic skills and artistic creativity that breeds a unique and often unusual spin on the typical. Have a look at the past two years to see what I mean.

This year would be no different, other than the fact we would take the shot with plenty of time to get the finished result printed on greeting cards and mailed out earlier than in the past. My wife had a vision for incorporating her fascination with mannequins into our photo, bringing in the two plastic people that occupy our living room décor as additional ‘members’ of our family and having the rest of us pose with frozen distant stares, as though we all were key players in some avant garde window display.

The photo shoot itself went relatively smoothly, and it wasn’t long before my wife had found and edited the chosen picture. Paired with a funny, offbeat quote from comedian Steven Wright, the design was cast and an order placed with Shutterfly.com. The coveted cards would be on our doorstep within a week – plenty of time to add personal messages, address the envelopes and send them on their way.

A week later when they arrived, I excitedly tore open the envelope. But to my dismay the cards had been cut off too short on the left side, disposing of the first word or two of the quote along with a significant portion of my son’s head.

Later that afternoon I called Shutterfly, ready to demand replacement cards at lightning speed. My frustration was only heightened by the 20-minute hold time before I spoke to a live human being, but to their credit, Shutterfly’s customer service handled the situation with extreme grace and I never even raised my voice. They offered to send replacement cards, cut correctly, within the next 2 days, and then refunded our entire payment for their failure to deliver the originals as promised. I was very pleased with how this had worked out. We would have our Christmas cards, still with time to get them into our friends’ and relatives’ mailboxes before the holiday, and we didn’t even have to pay for them! It was a Christmas miracle!

But a week later, on Monday, December 21^st, the cards had still not arrived.

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Armed with a positive, make-lemonade-out-of-lemons attitude, my wife decided that until our tree arrived she would enlist the assistance of one of her mannequins to be a “stand-in”. After all, presents were beginning to arrive and we had managed to get some of our own shopping done. Where would the gifts go, since we had no tree to put them under?

So she placed the female mannequin exactly where the tree would eventually reside, draped a tree skirt around its base and began placing presents at what would be the literal “feet” of our stand-in “tree”.

We all laughed at our plight. Who ever heard of a mannequin Christmas tree? But there she stood, and somehow Christmas, while not what we had planned or hoped for, was beginning to take shape and fill our home with the spirit of the season. And the realization was creeping in that we had stumbled upon an unlikely theme for this year’s celebration: mannequins.

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While waiting for the beyond fashionably late arrivals to our party, we managed to complete our family Christmas shopping and decorate our home. And finally on December 15^th, over three weeks from the day it shipped, the tree of my wife’s dreams arrived, living up to all her expectations. It wasn’t long before the mannequin was cast aside and the glorious mid-century marvel stood proudly above the presents, giving a sense of completion and a collective sigh of relief to our household. The delayed arrival was quickly filed away as a humorous memory and all that was missing was our Christmas cards. We had already settled in to the idea that they would not reach their final destinations until after the holiday, but we still anxiously awaited their arrival with each passing day.

Finally on December 22^nd the replacement cards arrived. The envelope was torn open to reveal…cards that were cut the exact same way as the originals. Somewhere on some cutting floor or paper shredder was yet another collection of portions of my son’s head and a ruined Steven Wright punch line. And none of our friends and family would reap the benefits of my wife’s artistic endeavors and share in our holiday joy.

But all we could do was laugh.

Especially when the UPS truck pulled up on December 23^rd to deliver a package from Amazon.com. None of us were expecting anything, and all of our presents we knew were coming had already arrived. What could this be?

A quick look at the sender and it was clear. This was the gift my wife had ordered, gift-wrapped and rush-shipped, for her Dad and his family. Only she had forgotten to change the ship-to address to theirs. So the default ship-to address for Amazon.com is to ship to the purchaser’s address. Our address. Two days before Christmas my wife stood in our home holding a box that was supposed to be in her Dad’s hands, with no time to get it there.

All we could do was laugh.

Especially my wife and I. Because we knew a secret that was going to erase all of the previous mishaps from our memories of this year’s unusual celebration.

Christmas morning our children woke us up at 4:30 am with the usual excitement and anticipation of opening presents. Mind you, our kids are 11, 14 and 17, so they are not little ones. But somehow we have all managed to maintain the child-like wonder that we believe should be an integral part of every Christmas.

They ran into the living room to reveal three new duffel bags, each with a small wrapped box on top.

“Where are we going?” our middle child asked repeatedly.

“Open the box and see,” came our answer.

All three kids frantically ripped the paper and flung open their boxes. Inside was an airline itinerary. After a few seconds of reading and searching the page for the important details, they began hopping up and down, screaming, “We’re going to San Francisco! And we’re going today!!!”

My wife and I grinned at each other. Weeks ago we decided to fly our whole crew back to San Francisco for a 10-day vacation and reunion with old friends. I grew up in San Francisco. My wife and I lived in the city for the first three years of our marriage, and then in the Bay Area for years afterward. Each of our kids was born in and grew up in the Bay Area. It is the home of most of their closest friends, as well as ours. The San Francisco Bay Area is our heart.

And we were going there on Christmas day.

Amidst all the turmoil, frustrations, delays and everything else that had attempted to throw a wrench in our Christmas celebration, we had managed to plan the ultimate surprise and the vacation we all needed. Gone were the thoughts of failure and disappointments. Forgotten was the looming possibility of a mannequin tree replacement. It was all worth the joy we all were collectively overwhelmed with at this moment. The joy of spending time with close friends. The joy of surprises. The joy of the anticipated vacation.

We looked at each other and celebrated the moment of joy. Then we turned to the kids and said, “Okay! You have two hours to pack! Let’s go!”