Copyright 2011 Megan Payne.
Illustrations: Copyright 2004 Bethany Payne
Smashwords Edition.
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Used with permission.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version ©1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
This digital edition published by Sunlight Books for the glory of God. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, except in fair use, by any means without written consent. All rights reserved.
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The Giving Tree
short stories of Christmas
Megan Payne
an anthology by
SUNLIGHT BOOKS
The Christmas Letter
~
"And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor...and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing."
Kelsey Hall decided to do something different this year. She was tired of looking at the pinched, hungry faces and the shivering bodies of the poor and the homeless and knowing that the little bit that she could give them would not last much longer than her "charitable" impulse. Charity. It was actually reading the so-called love chapter that changed her way of thinking entirely.
Charity, they said. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give to the poor. Wonderful deeds, they were. Pure religion and undefiled, it was. But according to the third verse of that love chapter in Corinthians, it wasn't charity.
And so with nary a word to anyone on what she was about and with all the fire and determination and vehemence that usually only the young can muster, Kelsey took herself down to the park in the middle of winter, staked out a bench, and wrote in her prettiest handwriting on her finest piece of stationery.
She wrote with passion, putting all the intensity she could feel into every word. She wrote, then read over her work, then bowed her head. A very long moment later, she carefully folded the letter and gently tucked into its waiting envelope. Then she turned around and left it on the bench.
~
Roy Billings had once had a good life: good corporate job, good home, good wife, good kids; he had it all. Now, he was just another homeless old man in a ratty, threadbare grey coat too large for him, pushing a shopping cart with his latest gifts from the church to his favorite park bench. He had a new blanket for tonight, a little thin, but warmer than the old newspapers he usually used.
He was just getting ready to sit down when he saw the white square leaning against the back of the bench. Roy had never found somebody else's leftovers here before, and he felt a small tremor of trepidation that the person who lost it would either return or that he would have to find it and give it to them.
But, of course, he wouldn't, he admonished himself. He was just being silly. Nevertheless, he looked both ways before he sat down on the bench beside it and tapped his bare fingertip against the torn knee of his jeans. His glove had sprung a hole last week. It gave him something other than the envelope to look at it.
For a moment, the distraction seemed to work, but then, Roy had always been curious, and finally, with a sigh, he gave in, plucked the envelope from the bench, and opened it. It was a letter. Written to him.
Beloved Stranger,
I do not know who you are, though I may have seen you from time to time as I walked through my world and you walked through yours. I may be somebody you recognize, or then I may only ever meet you through this letter.
But I want you to know something, dear stranger. I love you. I love you with all that is in me. I love you because you are a child of my Father God and you are precious and dear to my brother, Jesus. I love you and am praying for you as you hold this letter, that you know how much you mean to all three of us. Know that I am praying for you, that you are blessed and provided for and, most of all, loved this Christmas. Know that I am loving you and thinking of you today and every day.
You too are my family. You are precious to me. You are the reason Jesus came to earth and gave us Christmas and the cross and the resurrection. You are the reason a loving Father was willing to sacrifice His Son. You are the reason.
God bless you.
The letter was not signed. There was no indication of who might have written it or left it here for him to find, like a treasure in the snow. But that made it no less precious.
Roy clutched the letter to him, rocking back and forth as a feeling he had not had for years blossomed in his chest. He did not even reach up to wipe away the trickle of tears.
~
Melody Jensen was having a really bad day. Her car broke down on the way to work; her father called to say he wouldn't be flying in for Christmas after all; her brother needed to borrow money for Christmas presents because his work had skipped his Christmas bonus this year and tips were stingy; she had a terrible head cold; and on top of all that, she had promised Cynthia Ratzinger that she would show up to help at the soup kitchen on Christmas Eve.
But Melody's spirit of cheer was a formidable thing, as her brother liked to tease her. She had not worked three customer service jobs over the last ten years for nothing. She had not been filling up on her Scriptures every morning for nothing. She waited out in the car (borrowed from a friend) for almost fifteen minutes praying and loving God and praising with every ounce of her will before she walked inside the church, put on her apron, and took her place in the line. Here, they called her the Christmas carol girl, and she lived up to the name today, swaying to her own softly sung renditions of her favorite songs to Christ.
It would take every bit of Christmas spirit to see her through to tonight.
She had served perhaps a dozen people before an elderly gentleman with soft, gray hair moved up to the front of the line and smiled at her. His eyes were a little red, as if he had been crying, but his smile was pure sunshine, and she could hardly help but smile back.
"Merry Christmas," she told the man as she handed him the bowl of soup.
His smile brightened further. "God bless you, miss," he said, bobbing his head up and down happily.
But then, as Melody watched, his smile faltered. He looked suddenly thoughtful, then squinted at her. He opened his coat and pulled out a square white envelope and handed it to her. "Merry Christmas," he said more seriously. "Merry Christmas to you."
She wasn't sure what to make of it, but she carefully set the envelope to the side, where it wouldn't get hurt, and decided she would open it later when she got home.
The evening was long, but eventually, she did get home, and she had barely kicked the door shut and kicked off her shoes before the envelope was open and she was reading. She made it three sentences in before she had to sit down. She made it halfway through the second paragraph before she started crying. She could barely read it by the end.
This was why she was a Christian. This was why she celebrated Christmas. How could she have forgotten?
Suddenly, she sat up very straight with a resolve that surprised even herself. She stood up and tiptoed over to her apartment door and opened it just the tiniest crack to peek out. Down the hall at the very end was another closed door. It was the only door without a wreath, without any decoration of any kind. It was a lonely sort of door, precisely because she had often seen the lonely sort of look on the face of the man who went in and out of that door morning and evening. He had nobody, she was certain, and his face was the face of a man who knew he had nobody.
She turned back to the letter lying on her ottoman, then glanced back through the door. It would only take a moment, and he would never know it came from her.
~
Seth Morrison was a lonely man. He walked home from work three blocks away at a tall office building where nobody knew anybody unless required to harangue a certain amount of data from another in order to finish their job. He wore neatly tailored suits but lived in a cheap little apartment because he had once shared that apartment with Marta, his pretty little wife, who had died four years before.
Every Christmas after Marta had been lonely. But this Christmas was lonelier than all of them.
Seth unlocked his unhappy little door and turned the unhappy little knob and walked inside of his unhappy little apartment. Something rustled under his dress shoe and he glanced down, surprised. Very little surprised him anymore. He had no friends or family left to surprise him. Last year, he had at least a sister who remembered him in between all her own brood of youngsters. But this year, Chicago was clearly too far away, and he had not received even a single Christmas card.
On the floor lay a white square envelope.
He leaned down and picked it up on reflex, then hesitated once he held it in his hand. In the center of the dining room table rested a gun. This morning, he had carefully removed it from the bedside drawer where he had placed it for protection long ago, loaded it, and laid it out on the table with the thought in mind that he did not have to go on living this dreary life in this dreary world with not even a glimmer of love to show for it.
He was not sure he wanted to read this envelope. It clearly was not junk mail: that arrived in obnoxiously colored envelopes that were more advertising than anything else. It was not a circular from his utility company or his landlord: he had seen those a hundred times. No, this was fine stationery and he had little doubt it promised a personal letter, one that might dissuade him from his purpose.
But he knew no one here in this city, no one but the faces and names and job titles in his office building, and none of them were likely to try and cheer him up.
With a brief flash of curiosity, something Seth had thought long dormant, he opened up the envelope, removed the letter, and began to read.
Ludicrous, he wanted to say. Impossible! But his heart would not listen to his head. He sat down and read the letter again.
I do not know who you are, though I may have seen you from time to time as I walked through my world and you walked through yours. I may be somebody you recognize, or then I may only ever meet you through this letter.
But I want you to know something, dear stranger. I love you. I love you with all that is in me. I love you because you are a child of my Father God and you are precious and dear to my brother, Jesus.
He could not seem to read onward. I love you, the letter said. I love you, from a perfect stranger. A splash of love in his dreary, loveless world. I love you.
Somewhere in the city, bells began to ring. Seth looked up and remembered it was Christmas Eve. He remembered that one day long ago, Christ had left his throne in heaven and said, I love you, and was born.
Slowly, almost as if in a dream, Seth Morrison crossed the room, picked up the gun, and emptied its bullets into a trash can. He put the gun away in its proper place. He walked back to the closet in the hall and pulled out two pictures, one of his pretty wife, Marta, and one of Christ beckoning: Come to Me, and I will give you rest.
Finally, he sat down in his chair, cradling them in his arms. He was not lonely.
Joys to Come
~
Celandine was about to walk right past the flowers when she first saw them. She had been in her own small, depressed world for quite a while, and she almost didn't notice them. Then a bird flew right past her, and her head followed at a whiplash pace in startlement, and that was when she noticed the roses. There were three of them, snuggled down in a blanket of dry, scrawny thorns on a bush that should have given up weeks ago when the first blizzard blew into the small town of Hope. But there it was sitting, scrawny and sticklike and sprouting three magnificent pink and yellow blooms.
For a moment, Celandine just stopped and stared at them, mouth gaping like a fish's. She had given up weeks ago when the first blizzard hit town and the first employees at her work hit the door in company layoffs. She had shriveled up scrawny and sticklike when the landlord told her she needed to be out by the end of the month. She had gotten thorny and snapped at her mother and sister when they called and sent her one or two overly helpful friends packing because she didn't think she could deal with them. She hadn't bloomed.
The thought drew her up to an emotional halt to match her physical one. She shivered in her coat and glanced down at the packages in her arms that she had been planning to return for some much needed grocery money and a pitiful attempt to scrape together some rent. Christmas. Celandine generally bought her gifts before the Thanksgiving rush, along with the holiday meal, but after she lost her job, she told her mother and sister that she was planning on skipping Christmas this year. Suddenly, that didn't seem like such a good idea.
A cold wind blew past her. Celandine looked around anxiously, uncertain of what she should do. Then, her eye caught again on the roses. Her face that had been scowling softened. Her eyes that had been stung with bitter tears dried and quieted. She leaned over and breathed in the scent of the soft blooms and remembered a certain Rose of Sharon, the Gift and Light of the world—and of Christmas.
"Yes, Lord," she whispered to her risen Savior. Yes, I will trust You. Yes, I will give.
She did not pluck a rose to take with her as others might have done; rather, she fixed the image of the bush into her heart, left them to bless another passerby, and went on with more pluck in her step than she had for a while.
First, she stopped at the grocer's, wished him a merry Christmas, and purchased a few bulk items of food that would last her long enough, however long that would be. She dropped a penny into the Feed the Hungry box and smiled like she meant it. She did.
She stopped next at the post office and shipped her packages economy to her mother, sister, brother-in-law, and two nieces, not forgetting Christmas cards for the very friends she had been so harsh with. She stopped long enough to scribble apologies and love on the envelopes. "Merry Christmas!" she told the postal officer.
There was the local food bank next. She had never neglected them a single year that she had lived here, though this Christmas she had thought about it. She went in the back door of the church and hung up her coat as if nothing was wrong, smoothed down her skirt, and smiled at the deaconess presiding. "Can I help?" Celandine asked cheerfully. There truly was no food or money in her purse to share, but she had hands and was able. She spent the rest of the afternoon packing up boxes for the families in the surrounding areas who were in need.
At last, she stepped along merrily enough home. A star gleamed overhead, perhaps like the star of old. She thought she could hear again her mother singing that gentle Christmas lullaby: "There are joys to come, my little one, When you go to give to Jesus."
In the days ahead, the Lord would indeed provide for her needs and keep her in peace, but now, she did not need to know the path ahead, only that with Jesus, there were many joys to come.
Tell Me a Story
~
"Godmama!"
Annabelle flew over to engulf her arriving godmother with a hug too large for such small arms as hers.
"Just let me get unbundled, baby."
Little helping hands were promptly offered and gave perhaps more obstacles than aid, but at last, all the scarves and shawls and winter coat were off of Godmother; air kisses were exchanged; and the two settled in beneath an afghan.
"Tell me a story, Godmama."
"What kind of a story, baby?"
Annabelle thought and thought and lights twinkled from the garland until she said, "I'll start:
"Once upon a time, a visitor came for Christmas..."
Honey on the Basket
~
Back when my mama was a little girl, when she was called Isabel Sanchez instead of Bella Wilcox, when her mother was "just a young thing" and very poor, Christmas was a simple affair. It was a time when something "special" was all the children asked for, when family pulled even tighter together against the cold, when fires were warm in heart and hearth, and at least in Abuela's house, when even the food on your plate was fair game to give a stranger.
Those were the days when my abuela—my grandmother—brought home food in a great woven basket covered with dishtowels to keep it and its contents clean. And as my mama told me, the basket came home fuller than ever on Christmas, but never quite full enough.
On one such Christmas—"cold and warm" as my mama says—there was nothing "special," nothing but the usual fare of beans and rice and some chili. Tomás, only fifteen months old, was crying more than ever and Mama, being the eldest of the five, had to carry him around the house singing "Silent Night" to try and get him to stop crying. She was only eleven, but Abuela had left her in charge. Their mama had left for the market with a silver dollar and a few pennies to buy bread and whatever else could be gotten. Their papa had died of pneumonia only a few months after Tomás was born.
The younger children contented themselves with making paper stars and snowflakes to hang next to the pine cones and branches they had gathered earlier. The six-year-old twins, Rafael and Juanita, sat on the floor before the fireplace, while eight-year-old Roberto sat in the middle of their dilapidated old couch with an intent look on his face as he cut and snipped and paused to examine his handiwork.
Isabel finally set Tomás down on the patchwork quilt in the rocking chair and let him cry.
"Are you allowed to do that?" Juanita asked with wide eyes.
"Hush," said Isabel. "And you too, Nene!" she snapped, using Tomás's nickname, which simply meant baby.