This happened somewhere west of Boston and east of San Francisco, in one of those little towns that dresses up the week before Thanksgiving and stays in holiday finery until mid-January. The local hardware store sat on the corner of the courthouse square, watched over by the thirty foot fir tree and a statue honoring the town’s twenty-eight Civil War dead.
The proprietor of the hardware store might have been sixty, he might have been eighty. He continued to run a profitable business for three main reasons. One, if you had him copy a key, you knew it would fit your lock. Two, he could match paint shades better than a museum curator. Three, every November he cleared away the gardening paraphernalia from the back room and installed what his sign outside truthfully advertised as “the widest selection of gifts for all ages”.
The smell of a real Christmas tree combined with the lingering odor of potting soil gave the room the feel of a spruce forest after a light frost. A model locomotive clattered along a track suspended from the ceiling, a train of festively painted boxcars in tow. The shelves were packed with seemingly everything you might give as a Christmas gift, from cans of caramel corn and reindeer festooned neckties, to remote-controlled racecars and giant teddy bears.
Everyone knew that “The Hardware” was the true one-stop-shop for all your holiday shopping if you didn’t have the advantage of a detailed list of requests from each family member. You could find anything for anybody there, and besides, what was more festive than standing in the middle of that jumble of holiday gifts? From Black Friday to Christmas Eve, business was brisk every evening as shoppers hustled in and out.
As is the case with most retailers, it was quieter during “normal business hours”. Such was the case one afternoon when the sun slanted its dimming rays deep into the store. The owner was doing a crossword behind the counter when the bell above the door rang and a young man walked in with the attitude of being on a mission. He bypassed the counter without a word to the owner and headed for the back room.
He was dressed like he had come directly from work at a bank or law firm, and his left hand was curled like it was feeling for the coffee cup that it should have been gripping. The owner watched silently as the man started nosing around the displays.
He looked at a selection of bears, gauging their sizes. He picked up a brown one and a panda, then smiled when he spotted a rabbit of the same size as the bears. The bunny and the panda were chosen, and then the man knelt down to admire a large scale kit of a jet plane. He glanced around as if suddenly realizing something, and spotted the rack of shopping baskets. The stuffed animals and a model kit went into a basket, followed by a series of other gifts.
When he finally approached the counter, the owner noticed the purposeful stride belied a tiredness in the man. The customer made the first move, and seemed talkative.
“Nice store you have here. Glad I heard about it, it’s so hard to find gifts for everybody.”
“Did you find something for everyone on your list?” asked the owner.
“More or less,” said the shopper. “My two nieces, nephew, brother and his wife, sister, mom and dad, my aunt, and I guess everybody else gets gift cards.”
“Big family Christmas?”
“Yeah, pretty big, I guess. Hard to get excited when you’re not twelve anymore. I don’t know why they call it the most wonderful time of year.”
“I’m sorry to hear that sir.” The owner offered.
“All this running around. A whole month of big expectations, one giant flurry of wrapping paper, and then we take all the decorations down and sit in the cold until April.”
The owner nodded. The shopper paused and then kept talking.
“Why do you do this for the holidays?” He waved his arm around the store.
“Everyone needs some cheer this time of year,” said the owner. “Especially people that are stressed by holiday shopping.”
“Is it terrible I don’t feel much of anything about Christmas?” The shopper fumbled for his wallet.
“No, I’m afraid what you feel is more normal every year.”
“Really?”
“When you’ve been working in a store for as many holiday seasons as me, you start to notice things. People hustle in here, find a gift that fits the expectation they think the receiver has, and hurry on their way. You’re the only person over the age of fourteen that’s even looked at my train all week.”
“Why is that, do you think?”
“Well,” the owner chose his words carefully. “You say you don’t feel much of anything about Christmas. But do you still feel something?”
“I wish I could get excited about it. Everybody around me seems so happy. But I just feel tired. It gets dark early, we’re short-staffed at the office with people taking Christmas vacations, I never know what to get people for gifts, and things never live up to that perfect glow you always picture, you know?”
The storekeeper did know. He had spent Christmas 1968 in Vietnam and Christmas 2015 by a hospital bed.
“I should be happy,” the shopper went on. “I don’t need to worry about money, I’m healthy, but I just can’t get excited for Christmas.”
“I think a lot of the people you see that look happy feel the same way you do. But because we’re all supposed to be happy, if you don’t feel happy you pretend. It’s part of the expectation, like the gift giving.”
“Are you happy?” The customer was direct. “Or is this just a business for you?”
“I’m very happy,” said the owner. “I love this time of year, and I set up my shop so that people can come in here and get their Christmas shopping done like you did. Helps make a tough time a little easier for them.”
“Why are you happy when you know all the rest of us are miserable? Are you some kind of inverted Scrooge?”
“Because I know it doesn’t need to be like this,” the owner explained. “Do you want the whole story?”
“You mean about the angels and the manger?”
“More than that.”
“More? Okay, explain.”
“The holiday season started in Northern Europe because people needed an escape from the cold and misery of winter, so they created traditions to fend off the cold and loneliness. Humans sense a need for belonging and happiness, and making a month-long season out of Christmas is one way of trying to fill that.”
“That’s pretty deep for a hardware store owner.”
“We all have our hidden depths.” He winked. “But words like happiness and belonging don’t really get to the real root of what we need. There’s a buildup to Christmas, but what happens on December 26? For a lot of people, it’s a let-down. Because instead of relaxing and enjoying the season, lots of people spend all their time worrying about presents, decorations, entertaining, paying for everything…” he trailed off sadly and paused. “The problem is that Christmas has been robbed of its power to renew us.”
“You mean the manger.” The customer said.
“I mean the true glory of the manger. In our culture, even the nativity scene itself has lost its meaning, become just another ritual part of the décor. Think about what Christmas really means. It’s not just that it’s the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus, it’s that God looked down on humanity, with all our joys and pains, and wanted to live with us. To know what it was like to be human. It’s not just the birth of a religious leader, it’s the Creator of the world making Himself one of us, so that He could know us!” the old man’s voice swelled.
“We shouldn’t spend December rushing from one event to another, worrying about our schedules and budgets while we wryly expect the letdown. Because on December 26, the Savior of the world is living with us! That’s the message of Christmas that gets lost. He’s with us, and waiting for us. After the excitement of the Christmas season is over, He’s still there, with us always, you just have to ask. I believe our longing for happiness and belonging is a symptom of a need to know Him.”
“I can only speak for myself, mind you, but when things get dark around me, I know that Jesus is real, and that I can ask him for help at any time.”
“So enjoy this time of year,” the owner concluded. “Live every day of the Christmas season knowing that it doesn’t need to be perfect or fill all your needs. The perfect Christmas that will fill all your needs already happened in Bethlehem two thousand years ago.”
“I get the feeling I’m not the first customer that’s heard this.”
“And that’s why I’m happy.” The owner smiled. “I get to share Christmas with tired people that need it.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Merry Christmas.”
The customer headed for the door, then stopped and turned around. “What do I owe for the story?”
“Turn left when you leave, the nearest red kettle is eight doors down. That’s all I need. Oh yeah, and don’t forget the story. People do forget from year to year.”
“I’ll do my best,” the customer replied. “Merry Christmas to you too.”
The End
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