Chole’s stocking was hung by the chimney with care.

Even though the stores are all candy-corned up at present, it’s never to early to think about Christmas. Thus, although I never order anything from The Company Store, I was nonetheless delighted to get their “Get Your Home Ready for the Holidays Catalog.” Other than the tree, the wreathe, the poinsettias, and the greens – and I won’t be doing them until December – I already pretty much “have everything I need to create an inviting holiday home for family & friends.” Still, I like to look at stuff, even when I have no intention of buying anything.

Anyway, I was paging through the catalog when, what to my wondering eyes did appear than an array of cuter than cute Christmas stockings, labeled with names that the folks who order matching family PJs from The Company Store may well name their kids.

Noah. Benjamin. Avery. Stella. Jack. Elizabeth. Amelia. Samantha. Henry. Nary a Brandon nor Jaden, no Destiny, no Nevaeh (that’s heaven spelled backwards, btw) in sight. They even have their pet stockings labeled: the somewhat retro Ginger for a cat, and the more on current point Baily for a dog.

And then there’s the stocking for Chole.

Chole? Huh?

I did go to the google to see if I’d missed a cultural moment when one of the Kardashians or one of their pals named a baby Chole, setting off a naming flurry that resulted in enough little Choles out there, such that the name was now up there with Avery and Henry. But I mostly came away empty.

Which is not to say that the name Chole doesn’t exist. I really had to dig, but I did come up with a couple of baby name sites that list it as a nickname for Soledad, or as a regular old American name that means “Victory of the People.” But I put as much faith in those baby name sites as I do the sites that show the heraldry, the coat of arms for everyone with an English or Irish last name. (The illustrious Rogers family, when they weren’t grubbing around to see if there were any praties that hadn’t yet rotted, apparently had a crest with three deer on it. Right.)

Anyway, I couldn’t find anyone who was actually named Chole. And when you search for Chole, most of what you get back are recipes for chole marsala, a Punjabi chick-pea dish.

Chole. Maybe it actually is a diminutive for Soledad. And maybe there are folks with little ones named Soledad, who call their little one Chole. If so, then props to The Company Store for their nod to diversity. You’d think, however, given that all their other stocking names are on the Top Whatever list, that they might have used something more common. Like Soledad. As in journalist Soledad O’Brien.

But you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking they weren’t trying to appeal to the Hispanic demo, let alone to anyone who named their kid Chole because it means Victory of the People. I’m thinking that they meant that stocking to say Chloe.

In which case, I’m sorry that they printed all those lovely four-color catalogues with the name Chloe misspelled.

I know what it’s like to do a print job and discover, when you open the box, that there’s a big, glaring typo/spello staring you in the face.

I was in marketing before the Internet existed, and back in those days, you actually had to print your brochures out. Oh, folks still do print stuff. But it’s not like it used to be. A lot of stuff just gets put on the web as regular old copy or as a pdf. Which makes mistakes very easy to correct.

Before heading out on vacation, I once okayed brochure copy for an 8-page, 4-color, well-designed piece. For once, we had a bit of budget, so I got to work with an actual designer. A very sweet piece. I just loved it. Let’s print 10,000 of them! (Why not? The marginal cost of everything in the print run over 5,000 was negligible. Of course, if we’d given everyone in the world with even a tangential interest in this product 10 copies of the brochure, we still would have had plenty of them left over even if we’d just bought 5,000. But that’s how we used to think, back in the day.)

Anyway, I had someone lined up to proof the galleys, but she didn’t catch the glaring error that I had missed. I didn’t blame here at all. This one was clearly on me. Naturally, after the brochures were delivered, the guy who headed Quality Assurance left one on my desk with the word “illude” circled. Oops. I had meant “elude.” Should have asked him to proof the copy to begin with.

I sat there trying to convince myself that there was a way in which “illude” could kinda-sorta work. But I was kidding myself.

Anyway, we had no budget to do a reprint of the run.

So we lived with illude. Serves me right for using a fancy-arse word to begin with.

And, of course, no one noticed.

And, of course, there are probably 9,000 of those left over brochures rotting away in a landfill somewhere.

I suspect that same will be true with the Chole stocking. But at least the person – if they search for “name Chole” versus just “Chole” will find that at least some people think it’s a name.

And there’s always the possibility that they intended the name to be Chole to begin with. Which I don’t believe in the least. It just doesn’t go with Stella and Jack. I’m sticking with Chloe.

(Nice to have so much free time that I can dwell on nonsense like this, is it not?)

Merry Christmas, Chole, wherever you are!