What to Know
At the beginning of the holiday season, I am a stickler for perfection, organization, and all around clean lines when it comes to getting ready for Christmas with wrapped gifts and a Santa-ready home. But by the week before Christmas arrives, however, I’m more in the camp of using exorbitant amounts of tape to wrap around gifts, tossing what I can into gift bags, and being done with it all. That’s why I can absolutely relate to a mom on Instagram who refused to change her family’s Christmas cards when they came back to her with the wrong family name on them.
If this were to happen to the beginning-of-the-season version of me, I might be inclined to jump into action and fix it as quickly as possible. But, several hundred dollars and lots of hours of hard wrapping labor later, and I would probably do the same thing as this mom. Or, in other words, do absolutely nothing.
And no, she is not re-ordering the Christmas cards with the wrong family name on them.
The mom, Jessi, explains in her Instagram video that she ordered 80 Christmas cards with a photo of her family on them with the intent of mailing them out to friends and family. So far so good, right? Well, not really. Because, in an effort to get the cards done quickly online, Jessi forgot to remove the stock last name automatically in the proof photo while editing the card design online.
Now, instead of the card saying “Happy Holidays” from her family, the Ways, the cards have their name as the Sinclaires.
“Accidentally ordered all 80 of our Christmas portraits with the STOCK last name Sinclaire,” Jessi wrote in the caption of the video. “And no, I am absolutely not reordering them because these holiday cards already cost roughly one mortgage payment.”
She added that she is “just a busy mom over here doing her freaking best this holiday season.” Same, girl, same.
Other moms commented to joke about checking to see if Jessi had gotten a divorce and that was the reason for the name change. Some, with the last name Sinclaire, even commented to welcome Jessi to the family.
Another joked, “From the ‘Your Text Here Family.'”
Someone else shared a similar story where she also forgot to make sure the stock information was correct before she ordered her cards. But hey, at least she got the photo correctly.
“One year I actually left on the entire paragraph the stock card had,” she commented. “Elliot was doing well in soccer, Jannette was a straight A student, and Tyler had traveled. We’re not those people, but I’m glad they had a better year than we did.”
Mostly, though, people urged Jessi to lean hard into her mess-up and even get a Christmas tree ornament with her new “family name” on it. In fact, according to some, Jessi should make all of her family’s future Christmas cards include the fake last name. Hey, I’m all for family traditions, personally.
