**This lengthy post is for Lia who will most likely be the one to inherit my nativity set.**
My prized Christmas possession is my Lenox nativity set. I was first introduced to it during my mid twenties by my good friend and roommate, Kerry, while living in Huntington Beach. She had been buying pieces of this nativity set for years and giving them to her mother as Christmas gifts. When I lived with her, she had the drummer boy in her room and I immediately fell in love with its beautiful colors and intricate designs. However, I never imagined in a million years that I would own such a nativity set as the overall price of the entire collection was waaaay out of my budget and waaaay more than I would ever spend on a "Christmas decoration."
Fast forward a few years. Ron and I were newly married and home visiting my family for our winter vacation in 2005. My mom and I found ourselves shopping at the North Bend outlets and discovered that our beloved Lenox outlet was closing down for good. In fact, we learned that all of the Lenox outlets across the country (with the exception of the ones on the East coast) were shutting down. As sad as it was, it providing for some unbelievable deals as everything in the store was on clearance. To my surprise, I stumbled across the Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and one of the wise men of this nativity set for an unbelievable price. I immediately snatched them up without really knowing what I was going to do about the many other pieces of the set that were missing. It wasn't until my mom and I got home that I started calling around to some of the other outlets. Since I was returning back to California the next day, I called the Lenox store in the Camarillo outlets north of Los Angeles and learned that they only had one of the other wise men (luckily it wasn't the one that I had just bought). A little disappointed, I looked over the list of other outlets on the western half of the United States and decided to call the one in Las Vegas. To my surprise, I learned that this store had every other piece I was looking for! I couldn't believe my luck. I quickly called my cousin who lives in Las Vegas and not only found her at home, but available to go to the store that afternoon. So within two days, I managed to obtain every single piece of this nativity set that I wanted at three different outlet stores in three different states for a fraction of the price. It was a shopping triumph! And I truly thought that my collection was complete. Oh how wrong I was...
Fast forward a few more years to December 2011. My mother invited Lia and me to drive up to her church on the first Sunday in December to take part in the most amazing "Night of the Nativities" that her stake puts on every year. After being blown away by the fact that many, many people loan out their nativity set or sets for the weekend (something I would NEVER do) for people to admire, I was even more amazed by the amount and variety of nativity sets that were on display from all over world. Lia, my mom, and I walked around at a snail's pace carefully examining and admiring all of these unique and different sets. And then, suddenly, I found it: MY nativity set. Someone had actually loaned it out and there it was, on display, on a lower table that could easily be touched by any curious toddler. Ahhhh! After getting over my initial shock, I immediately noticed that there was an additional piece that I did not know existed--an oxen. What was this? So after returning home to my house that same night, I got online and learned that Lenox had continued to release a few new pieces every single year since I had bought mine. I guess that I should have figured this out on my own, but had never really thought about it. After perusing all of the new pieces, I decided that I really only wanted to add two of them to my collection: the oxen that I had seen and a camel. Since there were no Lenox outlets closing down, I would have to pay a little more than I was used to. As a result, I decided to purchase the oxen in 2011 and wait until 2012 to buy the camel. I found a decent price on the oxen online with free shipping and no tax and it arrived at my home a week or so later. I absolutely loved the piece and how it made my nativity set look so much more complete! In addition, my mother kindly offered to pay for it and give it to me for my 36th birthday. I happily jumped at the offer and gave it to her (after I had cheated and put the oxen on display for the rest of the holiday season--oops) once I had taken my Christmas decorations down.
A month or so later, Logan was born and I completely forgot about all of this. In fact, I completely forgot about all of this until I was putting up my Christmas decorations this year. It wasn't until I pulled out the oxen (that my mother had indeed given me for my birthday in May) that I remembered how I had wanted to add the camel to my collection. So that same evening, after everyone was bedded down for night, I sat down with my laptop to start perusing the Internet for the "best deal" out there, but to my surprise there were barely any deals out there. I couldn't find the camel anywhere. There were actually two different camels released for this set--one standing with a purple saddle and one sitting with a turquoise saddle. I could find the standing camel everywhere and the sitting camel nowhere! WHY? After looking for an half hour, I gave up and went to bed a little disgruntled. So, two nights later, I had some more time and energy in the evening to look again. After clicking on every single link from my search on google, I stumbled across two possibilities on the third page--a florist store in New Jersey and a website specializing in fine china and crystal claimed they had it. I decided to order it from the latter of the two since the price was $30 cheaper and it just seemed more legitimate. I was so pleased with myself when it went to bed that night. My diligent searching had paid off and I couldn't wait for it to arrive in the mail in the next week or so. However, the next morning, I received an email from the company informing me that they had cancelled my order due to the fact that the manufacture had stopped making the item. What?! So I quickly called them and talked to a woman who indeed confirmed that Lenox was no longer making the sitting down camel. She did not know if this was was the case for just this year or if it was for good, but it sure explained why I had such a hard time finding it. But, luckily, I knew of the other website where I could order it. I got back on my computer and ordered it from the random florist shop in New Jersey. I was willing to pay the additional money now that I knew how hard it was to find. However, I had a hunch that the same thing would happen the next day and it indeed it did. At promptly 8:30 a.m., I received a call from New Jersey stating that they no longer carried the camel and that they had already removed it from their website. Argh.
At this point, I decided that it was time to get to the bottom of all of this. I called a random Lenox outlet in North Carolina and got a very helpful salesclerk on the phone. After confirming that she hadn't seen the camel in her store for a few years, she gave me the number for the main Lenox warehouse in Pennsylvania that specializes in helping people locate "hard to find pieces." I quickly called the warehouse and learned that the camel had been RETIRED in 2010. Retired! Why? The lady had no idea why, but she confirmed that I would no longer be able to find this camel anywhere in any shop in the country--Lenox outlet or not--because it had been a few years since the last one had been made. As silly as this seems, my heart dropped a bit. For some reason, I just really wanted to add this piece to my nativity set and the harder it was to find, the more I wanted it! The woman at the warehouse informed me that the only way I was probably going to find this camel was on eBay. As a result, I decided that it was time to play the eBay game for the first time in my life and quickly opened up accounts with both eBay and Paypal and jumped in feet first! As I thought, there were a ton of standing up camels for bid, but only three sitting down ones. Two of them could be bought right away if I was willing to pay $140 or $165 which I was not. The third one was in the throes of a seven-day bidding war and was currently at $50! That made me happy and so I started to patiently watch and wait out the remaining four days....and then it just got depressing. Every day the price went up more and more til it finally closed on a Monday night at $152.50 with 14 different people bidding on it. During this process, I realized that I was NEVER going to get this camel at a decent price as clearly the retired aspect of this piece made it very hard to find and very valuable to those who wanted it. It was during this time that I was talking to my mom on the phone and expressing my eBay woes. Being the wise woman that she is, she stated, "There has got to be at least one camel left on some shelf in some random store in some state in this country!" I quickly replied that if there was, I would never be able to find it. It would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack, or in this case, a camel in haystack!
So after the camel closed on eBay on that Monday night, I went to bed and realized that I had become a little obsessed with this entire thing. I had spent HOURS online in the past week trying to find this camel and watching eBay like a hawk. It was not healthy and it needed to stop. As silly as this seems, I actually asked Heavenly Father while saying my bedtime prayer that night if there was anyway possible that He could help me find the camel. And if this was impossible, I asked Him to help me let it go and move on. I then woke up the next morning with an idea. What if I just gave up on the dream of finding the sitting camel and bought the one standing up that was still available everywhere for a decent price? Surely this would help me let it go. So this past Tuesday, while Logan was taking his morning nap and Lia was watching a Tinkerbell movie, I sat down on the couch and began my hunt to find the best priced standing camel. I had clearly remembered seeing it online the previous year for $50 with no tax and free shipping while searching for the oxen, but much to my chagrin, I was annoyed that I couldn't find it anywhere for this same price. In fact, the cheapest price I could find anywhere was $70! The more I looked, the madder I got and the more determined I became to find it for the price that I had previously seen. I mean, there is NO logical reason why this piece should have increased in value this much in just twelve months! Since Logan was still sleeping and Lia was still watching her movie, I just kept plugging along, clicking on every single link I came across on my google search and, before I knew it, I was on the sixth page! Yes, that's right, the sixth page. While on this page, I clicked on a link, and to my surprise, a picture of the sitting down camel popped up. A little surprised, I did a some research and learned that the website indeed claimed that this item was "in stock." Hmmmmm. Not to be tricked again, I asked Lia to get up and bring me the phone. Before I knew it, I was calling the Santa Claus Christmas Store (yes, that really is the name of the website's store) in Santa Claus, Indiana (yes, that really is the name of the town). A very nice lady answered the phone and after explaining to her what I was looking for she said, "I think I've seen that before. Let me get your number and I'll go look for it and call you back." Yeah right. Totally doubting what this woman said, I gave her my number anyways and waited. Sure enough, a few minutes later, she called back and informed me that she had the camel right there in her hand. WHAT??? No way. I said, "You really have the sitting down camel with the turquoise saddle?" to which she replied, "Yes." I said, "You don't understand. This camel was discontinued two years ago and is not to be found in any store anywhere in this country. It simply doesn't exist!" Happily she replied that she really had it and that she would put it behind the counter to be shipped to me and that I should order it online and not over the phone so that I could get the 20% off online special. I almost fell off the couch at this point. As one would imagine, I bought that camel before you could say "Merry Christmas!" and was delighted to learn that not only was it 20% off, but there was no tax or shipping charges. Take that, eBay!
And so for the next week, Lia and I waited with baited breath for our beloved camel to arrive. In fact, I kept on worrying that it would either get lost in the mail or that it would arrive and be the wrong one. But thanks to the UPS tracking system, I carefully watched it travel across the country and was delighted the morning I learned that it had finally crossed over the state borders into Spokane and was scheduled to arrive a day early! A few hours later, the doorbell rang and Lia and I immediately started jumping up and down. Thanks to all my hype, that girl was as excited about the camel as I was. We frantically tore open the box and there she was, the sitting down camel in all of her new and discounted glory. We truly had found the camel in the haystack! We carefully placed her on the table and she fit perfectly with the rest of the set! Our camel had found her home. So, in closing, I would like to say that I am so grateful for the tender mercies of Heavenly Father and for the fact that He does hear and answer our prayers--even when our requests are sometimes small and simple. And on a less serious note, I also have a renewed belief in Santa Claus and in the fact that he really does make your Christmas dreams come true. There's just one difference--he doesn't live in the North Pole anymore. Apparently, he lives in Santa Claus, Indiana! :-)
