THE SPIRIT OF THE SEASON
Sometimes it takes a simple story to convey the spirit of the holiday season, or as I like to call it, the True Meaning of Christmas (tm).
Some tales are timeless, like the non-Jim Carey/Ron Howard Grinch. As part of a preprinted religous tract stuffed into a Christmas card we received this year, we read another touching story about a woman putting up Christmas lights every year of her entire life along the improbably named Highway 69 (an odd touch for a religious story, I thought), even though--and this was the tearjerking surprise at the end--she had been blind since birth. And in these troubled times, I'd like to offer up one more tale of holiday cheer, courtesy of our friendly neighborhood Bizarro S------. So gather the kids around the fireplace and have a box of tissues handy.
Walking up to the grocery store the other night, I was greeted by the timeless holiday sound of a Salvation Army worker ringing his bell. As I got closer, I heard someone yelling at him.
"Stop doing it that way--you're driving me crazy!" the good Samaritan shouted in a voice more closely resembling a drill instructor than one of Santa's helpers. "Swing your arm up higher so it rings more... more steadily!" Seeing how the spirit of the season is timeless, the fact that the bellringer spoke no English probably didn't matter. The warmth and sincerity of the message needed no common language to be shared.
And--get those tissues ready, folks, because here comes the real tearjerker of an ending--do you know who that good Samaritan was? Santa Claus? A homeless person? A random shopper driven to temporary psychosis by the lack of saleable produce inside the store?
No, gentle reader. It was an employee of the aforementioned store, generously spending his 15-minute break on the sidewalk, yelling at a volunteer bellringer.
I hope this story of holiday warmth touched you as much as it touched me. If not, maybe you should try to find the story about the holiday lights on Highway 69. I just wouldn’t do a Google search for it, if you get my drift...