A wonderful Christmas surprise

The Friday Letter No. 521 / Dec. 23, 2022 / 6th day of Hanukkah

Author’s note: I wrote this short story in the first person voice of an 11-year-old girl named Anna Grace. The story first appeared on these pages a few years ago, and is republished today, with some tweaking here and there, for our new readers.

A small town in Ohio, Christmas 1959

Twenty years have passed since that most memorable childhood Christmas, though I see it like yesterday. It lives because I think about it so often. Seven years earlier, when I was only four, we had lost our dad, killed in the last days of the Korean War. I barely remember him. Donna Jean was only one. She doesn't remember him at all.

Just so you keep this straight, at Christmas 1959 I was 11, Donna Jean was eight. I am Donna Jean's big sister, Anna Grace. We lived with Mother in a shotgun frame house that Mom and Dad bought right after Father came home from the war in Europe. It was tucked into a neighborhood of similar houses, on narrow lots with long back yards where Donna Jean and I had a swing set and Mother grew vegetables. Facing the alley was a rickety one-car garage where Mother kept her 1948 Olds coupe. The garage had about a 15-degree list, and, Mother often worried, would be falling down any day now. Like the house, it was sorely in need of a paint job. We burned the trash in a 55-gallon oil drum and threw the garbage on our compost heap. The trash man came down the alley now and then and emptied the barrel for fifty cents. Twice a week the milkman left two quarts of milk at the back door.

Two days before Christmas we were so excited we could hardly stand it. It wasn't that we'd be getting much, because we didn't have much. I don't recall being bothered by this, because we really didn't know any better. Mother worked at the utility office for fifty-eight a week, and we had some kind of insurance money. I didn't understand the finances, but we got by. We almost always had enough to eat, so let's just leave it at that.

Our home was always cheery and bright at the holidays. We had strings of lights and my favorite was the electric candles that bubble when they warm up. Mother waited till Tuesday to get our tree – Christmas was on Friday that year – because by then you could get one for fifty cents if you weren't too choosy. That year our tree wasn't perfectly straight, as Donna Jean keenly noted. “Look,” she said, “it tilts just like the garage!”

If you are wondering where this story is going, let me explain. A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, our preacher, Brother Grover Cleveland Bales of the Maple Avenue Mission Bible Church, announced that a collection would be taken up to help some poor families at Christmas. Now given our upbringing, how Mother taught us what Jesus said in Luke about helping the least, the last, the lost, the lonely, we immediately flew into action.

Brother Grover Cleveland Bales of the Maple Avenue Mission Bible Church was an imposing figure, a burly giant at well over six feet with a bushel of light brown hair that shot wildly from his head. He attracted followers with his charm and grace, and especially his good humor. He was the size of a small bear. He loved to tell corny jokes. “What's bad for your teeth? A brick!” Then he would let out a bellow you could hear a block away. And his preaching – without notes but a Bible in his hand – would make the Devil run for cover.

“Children,” he told us in Sunday School class, “we are going to help some poor folks here in town have a nice Christmas. So starting next Sunday, please bring in what you can for the collection.” Because we never considered ourselves poor – Mother would never allow that – we knew we had to help those who were.

And so, Donna Jean and I looked around for ways to make our contribution. Mother said we could save a little money by turning off lights we didn't need. We turned down the heat on the oil space heater in the living room and wore sweaters. We held back our milk money from school – certainly we could make it from breakfast to lunch without a milk snack for a few weeks. Mr. Brady let me sweep out his bicycle repair shop for twenty-five cents each time.

A week before Christmas we took our collection to church and dumped it into a bucket put up for the cause. Brother Grover watched from a doorway. He smiled as we passed through. “Thank you, Anna Grace. Thank you, Donna Jean,” he said. “The Lord is watching. He knows what dwells in your precious hearts.”

I won't lie. We felt pretty smug about this, like we were performing some grand act. And I guess we were when you consider that it was about all we had to give. Not everything, of course. Donna Jean and I pooled some of the change we had saved and bought some ribbons for Mother's hair. That would be our present to her that year.

Others brought in money and canned goods and gifts for children and adults alike. The air in our church was electrified. Everyone was excited to be a part of this important mission. Everyone knew that some of the poor folks in our town would be getting a wonderful Christmas surprise.

After church the week before Christmas, we gathered in the fellowship room to wrap the presents and box up the food and mark them for delivery. Brother Grover's wife steered Donna Jean and me to a corner away from the others and gave us crayons to decorate the boxes. “This is an important job,” she explained. “Nobody else can do it.” The best part of this job was the hot chocolate and cookies the church ladies had laid out. In time, everything was ready.

And so, late Wednesday afternoon, the day before Christmas Eve, we listened to carols on the radio and sat for a while in the kitchen window watching a light snow begin to fall. Mother had just come home from work and was getting ready to make dinner.

There was a knock at the front door.

The person's face was blocked by the enormous pile of wrapped packages he juggled in one hand while pulling a wagon filled with food – including a frozen turkey – with the other. But I immediately recognized him by his immense size alone, this giant who stood in our doorway.

It was Brother Grover Cleveland Bales of the Maple Avenue Mission Bible Church.

“Merry Christmas!” he bellowed, trying not to stumble as he maneuvered the large load of cargo onto the living room floor.

Mother ran from the kitchen, flabbergasted. Donna Jean let out a shriek of joy. I was dumbfounded. Did he get the wrong address?

“But. . . ,” I started to say.

“A blessed Christmas to all,” he interrupted. We stood speechless, the three of us.

A blessed Christmas, indeed.

Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him. – Proverbs 14:31.

c. 2022 by Stephen Combs. May not be reproduced or distributed (except to Share from these pages) without the expressed written permission of the author.

(This story was inspired by a true one, its details I have mostly forgotten, recounted years ago by the late Paul Harvey. My story is dedicated to Donna Jean Sobonya, my schoolmate from Terre Haute (1944-1953).

The Friday Letter is published at USSA News.