It isn’t too late for a good Christmas story, is it? I hope not. You see, now that the holidays are done, the tree is put away, the bills are reconciled, and I seem to be spending hours each week waiting for my kids in one room or another as they take part in their extracurricular activities, I am ready to get some reading done.
One of the books that I have neglected is a collection of inspiring Christmas stories. One story in particular struck me in a way that I am not likely to forget. It centers around a family who are poor in money but rich in love, a story that has the requisite happy ending, but maybe not the one that you might at first expect.
The reason I like this story is it inspires me to renew my commitment to frugal living on a number of levels. It teaches that money is not needed for happiness, and that most of us are already blessed with so much that we tend to focus on the wrong things. I’m pointing figures at myself here, people.
It also inspires me to save more, so I can share more.
The story is called A Candle in the Forest by Temple Bailey. It is a public domain work, so you can easily find it for yourself, edited in slightly different forms. I’ll include some links at the end of this post.
An excerpt:
The Small Girl’s mother was saying, “The onions will be silver, and the carrots will be gold –”
“And the potatoes will be ivory,” said the Small Girl, and they laughed together.
The Small Girl’s mother had a big white bowl in her lap, and she was cutting up vegetables. The onions were the hardest because one cried a little over them.
“But our tears will be pearls,” said the Small Girl’s mother, and they laughed at that and dried their eyes and found the carrots much easier, and the potatoes the easiest of all.
Then the Next-Door Neighbor came in and said, “What are you doing?”
“We’re making a vegetable pie for our Christmas dinner,” said the Small Girl’s mother.
“And the onions are silver, and the carrots gold, and the potatoes ivory,” said the Small Girl.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about,” said the Next-Door Neighbor. “We are going to have turkey for Christmas, and oysters and cranberries and celery.” The Small Girl laughed and clapped her hands.
“But we are going to have a Christmas pie–and the onions are silver and the carrots gold–”
“You said that once,” said the Next-Door Neighbor, “and I should think you’d know they weren’t anything of the kind.”
“But they are,” said the Small Girl, all shining eyes and rosy cheeks.
Coincidentally, I happen to be roasting a chicken, not a turkey, and minus the oysters of course. It was one that I had to pull from our emergency freezer stash as cash for groceries is super tight this month. I was while feeling a bit put out because everyone really wanted something else for dinner. The reality is that what we think of our humble dinner would have been a feast for the characters in the story. Puts things in perspective pretty quickly.
I hope that you find as much inspiration in the story as I did. Here are some links, so you can read it yourself in its entirety.
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