Several years ago my wife was shopping in Target, not her usual behavior since she hates shopping (I know, I'm a lucky guy). While she was there she saw two adorable jingle bell trees that she wanted, but it was uncharacteristically expensive for Target so I asked her to wait for the big one whole we purchased a small one - I planned on coming back when they had it on clearance. Christmas day came and Target put it on clearance on their website so I tried to order it... and FAILED. This was back when stores had not anticipated the traffic their sites would see and store sites were crashing left and right. Oh, no I thought, well the stores should have them if they are already on clearance on their website right?
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
As usual we were at my in-laws for Christmas but I had to head home the next day to go to work later in the afternoon. On the way home I checked every Target store between Fredericskburg and Richmond, Virginia, including several stores in Richmond. Strike one, strike two, strike three... strike seven. Oh no. What am I going to do. Let's check the website one more time... SOLD OUT! I guess their clearance sale worked, a little too well for me.
My next hope was next year, surely Target would come through with such a cool Christmas decoration and it would be even better! Right? Next Christmas came... I checked several Target stores, no jingle bell tree, in fact nothing anywhere close. The following year came and went, no jingle bell trees. I started to get desperate. I thought about making my own Jingle bell Christmas tree, it couldn't be that hard right? Finding good jingle bells became the challenge. There's not a good selection and nothing close to the ones on the tree Target had. Oh no, what was I going to do?
The Land of Misfit Toys
My last ditch effort was to check where you never know what you might find, the classic place to find things when no other place will do, eBay. I told you I was looking for several years right? Well while searching Target stores I was also searching eBay, for years. This year I finally hit the jackpot! Someone, it appeared like they were an online consignment shop, was selling TWO trees, one small and one large! Score! I put in my bid and in the end I won! I could hardly wait for them to arrive.
About a week later a box arrived, I shook it a little and knew exactly what it was. The trees were here! I could hardly wait, I would finally be forgiven for my shortsightedness. Sure enough when she opened them all was forgiven, and both of our searches (yes unknow to me she had been looking all these years too) were finally over, thanks to eBay.
So there they are in an honored place on our fireplace mantle. Now we nearly have a forest of jingle bell trees with the three Target jingle bell trees and a few other jingle bell trees we have collected over the years, but none with the jovial charm that the Target version has.
So the first day of Christmas has come and we finally have our partridge in a Jingle Bell tree!
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