What To Get Your Chickens For Christmas, From Neiman Marcus
While Best Buy and Target have been busily putting together Black Friday deals in anticipation of this year’s holiday shopping season, luxury item peddler Neiman Marcus has more refined gifts up his sleeve. The holiday catalog reveals some of the most titillating fantasy gifts to date. So turn up your nose at those crinkly newspaper department store ads, and take a gander at the things you really want you family to have for Christmas.
And don’t forget to get something for your chickens.
That’s right. This year’s Neiman Marcus catalog features an adorable hen house, complete with chandelier. The posh hen house is priced at $100,000 (but you’ll have to pay extra to ship it to Granny’s house) and includes a book-laden library and custom-built garden. “You’ve always fancied yourself a farmer,” quotes the catalog, “Now thanks to Heritage Hen Farm, you’re doing it in the fanciest way possible.” The hen house is modeled after France’s Versailles Palace.
Believe it or not, the hen house is not actually the gift that will put the biggest dent in your credit card. That would actually be the pair of his and her watches from Van Cleef Arpels, priced at just over $1 million. In the watches’ defense, they include a trip to Paris and Geneva and come in a nifty box.
For those who don’t have chickens to buy for this year, do not fear. Almost 40 percent of the items in the catalog are under $250. Dad can even have his $10 monogrammed mug.
Neiman Marcus began the tradition of including a few outrageous fantasy gifts in its catalog in 1959. The gifts are purposed to hype up the holidays and encourage the purchase of more inexpensive options. After all, next to a million dollar watch, the hen house looks downright shabby.
The original fantasy gift was a Black Angus steer that could be presented alive or delivered in steak form on a silver serving cart. Ginger Reeder, Neiman Marcus’ vice president of public relations for Neiman Marcus, said the fantasy gifts are a nod to the spirit of the holiday season and the fantasies children have about what they want for Christmas.
