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I am one of those sappy women that can’t approach Christ­mas with­out weep­ing. I don’t shed sor­row­ful tears, instead they are fill­ing up my “Joy­ous Tears” jar. Christ­mas screams hope and joy around every cor­ner. The key though is you have to look for it.

This past week­end, we went to Bass Pro to let the boys run amuck through their Santa land.  We weren’t plan­ning on doing the Santa thing. Not because we’re anti-Santa, but the boys have always been a bit pompous about that whole thing. “Silly fairy tales,” as Old­Man mut­ters. How­ever, we hap­pen to get there before the crowd got crazy so I got in line while J took the boys around the train tracks, the rac­ing tracks, and the shoot­ing range. Even though Old­Man swore he was too old for this and was only going to stand next to Santa, see­ing Santa look him in the eyes and say, “Hello, young man, I hope you’re not too old to come talk to me.” melted Old­Man into but­ter. He was a great Santa!

How­ever, while I was in line by myself, I was strug­gling with a con­ver­sa­tion I was hear­ing from the mother and son behind me. I heard the fol­low­ing com­ments come out of the mom’s mouth:

~Let’s prac­tice your smile, Lord knows you need it.
~Say,“Pumpkin”…never mind, that’s worse. Just smile!
~Stop talk­ing, it’s embar­rass­ing.
~Don’t touch the rope again or your grounded.
~If you look at me one more time I’m ground­ing you for a week.
~Oh good, you’re cry­ing like a baby. Just per­fect for your pic­ture with Santa.
~‘(After he told her, “You’re ruin­ing this for me, mom.”) Don’t blame me, this is all your fault.

I quickly felt my pulse start to race, my arms and legs were going numb. I wanted to take that boy and fiercely pro­tect him. I strug­gled with what to do or say. I prayed fever­ishly that the Lord would take away these harsh words from his mem­ory. About that time, there was some tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties so Santa came into the line and started talk­ing to the kids. That imme­di­ately cheered the boy up.

Last night, that mother and son came to my mind again. I prayed for them both this time.  That lit­tle boy needed to expe­ri­ence a mag­i­cal Christ­mas, but I think the mother needed to as well. I prayed that she would find a renewed hope and maybe a reminder of what the Joy of Christ­mas was about.

Have your­self a merry lit­tle Christ­mas,
Let your heart be light
From now on,
Our trou­bles will be out of sight
Have your­self a merry lit­tle Christ­mas,
Make the Yule-tide gay,
From now on,
Our trou­bles will be miles away.