Looking through old photographs last night the ghost of Christmas past visited me in the form of a monkey…Ricky the Santa Monkey to be exact.

It was Christmas 2004. I was 5 months pregnant. I had a 2-year-old.  Those last two factors alone pretty much guaranteed a very hormonal holiday, wrapped up in a neat little package.

The hubby and I got in an argument over something, which I’m sure was exacerbated by my knocked-up condition.

He offered to escape my wrath take Miss C to the mall and when they returned he handed me this picture:

Yes for a small fee you too could have received this classy keepsake photo, complete with digital date stamp imprinted on the side. This is a family heirloom moment just waiting to be airbrushed on a t-shirt.

I cried I laughed so hard.

Well played hubby, well played.

Our local mall shut down not long thereafter, so let this be a lesson for you. If your mall is so broke they hire a monkey Santa, they probably won’t make it much longer. Our mall finally closed four years later. I’m sure the Santa monkey was a tipping point.

The real moral of this story, though, is for the husbands out there. Get thee to a mall with a Santa monkey if your wife is ticked off at you this holiday season. She’ll never remember why she was mad at you once you’ve made the pilgrimage to see a primate in a Santa suit.