The Holidays with Mr. Mitchell

My husband, Jim Mitchell, runs a billion-dollar empire…and this Christmas he gave everyone a charcuterie board and champagne. (Yep. Scrooge in Tom Ford canceled the holiday magic.)

AVERY: Being married to Jim Mitchell meant champagne toasts, luxury empires, and billion-dollar deals. But this Christmas? It meant being married to a man who signed off on a charcuterie board and called it a holiday. Yep. My brilliant, drop-dead-gorgeous husband basically gave his entire empire Clark Griswold’s boss’s idea of holiday cheer: the Jelly of the Month Club. Congratulations, Mitchell and Associates…you get some meat, some cheese, and a bottle of champagne. Merry...

My husband, Jim Mitchell, runs a billion-dollar empire…and this Christmas he gave everyone a charcuterie board and champagne. (Yep. Scrooge in Tom Ford canceled the holiday magic.)

AVERY: Being married to Jim Mitchell meant champagne toasts, luxury empires, and billion-dollar deals. But this Christmas? It meant being married to a man who signed off on a charcuterie board and called it a holiday. Yep. My brilliant, drop-dead-gorgeous husband basically gave his entire empire Clark Griswold’s boss’s idea of holiday cheer: the Jelly of the Month Club. Congratulations, Mitchell and Associates…you get some meat, some cheese, and a bottle of champagne. Merry freaking Christmas. Jim might have run Mitchell & Associates, merged with Titus Hawk’s empire and owner of the prestigious Saint John’s Hospital, but when it came to the holidays, he’d officially turned into Clark Griswold’s boss. No party. No magic. Just Scrooge in a Tom Ford suit. And I’d had enough. With a little help from my friend, Cat Veléz, the most ruthless luxury event architect in California. I was determined to remind my husband that Christmas wasn’t a line item you delegated. It was something you felt. But pulling Jim out of boardrooms and back under the mistletoe? That was going to take more than champagne.

JIM Hold up! In my defense…it was a very nice charcuterie board. Imported meats. Fancy cheeses. Champagne that cost more than a BMW. Apparently, that doesn’t count as Christmas. Turns out, my wife didn’t want a gift basket. She wanted me. And when my brother, Jake, and the doctors at St. John’s all started calling me Scrooge… …and my wife, Avery, started looking at me like I was Clark Griswold’s tight-fisted boss? Well, that’s when I realized I hadn’t just screwed up Christmas. I’d screwed up with her. Now Avery and Cat Veléz, California’s deadliest event architect, are plotting a holiday coup across my entire empire. Snow machines, rooftop galas, fir trees flown in by private jet—I’m basically footing the bill for Santa’s hostile takeover. (And to quote Clark Griswold from Christmas Vacation: Hallelujah…holy sh!t…where’s the Tylenol?) I’d built an empire. But saving Christmas—and my marriage—wasn’t going to take money. It was going to take me proving to Avery that beneath the Scrooge act, I was still her Mr. Mitchell.

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