Christmas Miracles (14 page)

O
ne of our favorite Christmas miracle stories was told to us some years ago by a woman who had grown up on a farm outside a small town in North Dakota in the 1930s.

“That December we were living in an old farmhouse that had more cracks than Daddy could patch with tar paper,” Julie Wilkins remembered. “We had lost our farm the year before and we had lost Mama to typhoid fever that summer. There were four of us kids—Steve, twelve; Larry, eight; Merrie, fourteen; and I was ten—who had to nestle as close as possible to the old oil burner in the front room and try to keep warm enough to do our homework at night.”

It was just before Christmas that Julie came down with a really bad fever.

“We had but one blanket a piece,” she remembered, but Merrie and the boys all piled the covers on me when they were doing their chores and homework. Normally, everyone walked around that cold and drafty old house with blankets around us like Sioux Indians, but they wanted me to get warm enough to break my fever.”

After losing the family farm, their father worked during the spring, summer, and fall as a hired man for Mr. Hanson, an elderly farmer. “The problem was, old man Hanson had no need of hired help during the winter months,” Julie said, “but we still had need for food. Daddy was lucky to get a part-time job at the elevator until fieldwork began in the spring.”

Julie remembered that her father was extremely depressed that December.

“It would be our second Christmas in the cold and drafty old farmhouse,” she said. “And, of course, worst of all, it would be our first Christmas without Mama.”

Julie was quick to point out that the family used to have really wonderful Christmases. “We were never rich, but we were well enough off until the Depression wiped Daddy out. But more than our nice home on the family farm, the presents around the Christmas tree, and the delicious holiday dinners, we missed Mama.”

Because of the terrible melancholy that had enveloped their father, Julie did not wish to concern him with her illness, so as much as possible, she suffered in silence.

“One entire day while the other kids were at school, I lay and prayed that we could have more blankets and just a little extra money so that we could have a nicer Christmas and so Daddy would not have to work so hard,” she said.

On the afternoon of the Christmas miracle, Julie remembered that she had been huddled next to the oil burner, waiting for the kids to come home from school.

“I knew my fever was getting higher,” she said. “I wanted Merrie there with me. She was the oldest, and she always seemed to know that to do. She was like another mom to us younger kids.”

Julie heard the front door open. “The sound of the door opening really startled me,” she said, “because I knew that Steve, the last one out the door that morning, had locked it behind him.”

She turned to see a very handsome man walk into the house. “He was fairly tall, well built, and he had long blond hair that reached nearly to his shoulders,” she said. “I couldn't think of any man around those parts who wore his hair so long.”

Julie started to say something about trespassing, but he just smiled at her. “I will never forget his bright blue eyes,” she said. “And the way he lifted one hand as if to indicate that he had come in peace, that he wouldn't hurt me.”

The stranger had four thick blankets under one arm, and he set them down on the kitchen table.

For the first time, Julie noticed that he wore hardly anything at all against the cold North Dakota winter weather.

“He had on just a thin white shirt and a pair of blue jeans,” Julie said. “I could see that he meant to give us those blankets, so I spoke up and told him, ‘You'd better keep a couple of those for yourself, Mister. You'll like to freeze to death in this awful cold.' ''

The handsome stranger smiled, and he spoke for the first time. “He spoke in this very unusual, beautiful, rich voice,” Julie said. “It was kind of like he was somehow singing and talking at the same time. ‘I won't need them, thank you,' he said. ‘They are for you.' ”

Just before he left, the man took four $20 bills from his shirt pocket and set them on top of the blankets. “A little extra money,” he said with a broad smile.

He was almost to the door when he turned to her and said in that same talking/singing voice, “You'll soon be better, Julie. Merry Christmas.”

And then he was gone.

“Immediately after he left,” Julie said, “I knew that I had just seen an angel. He had come in answer to my prayers. I had asked for some more blankets and ‘a little extra money,' and that was just what he had left us.”

When Merrie, Steve, and Larry came home from school, Julie told them excitedly that an angel had brought them four new blankets and some money.

“Merrie felt my forehead and said something about how my fever felt so high,” Julie said. “She covered me with the new blankets and poured hot tea down my throat until the fever broke.”

That night when he came home worn out from work at the elevator, their father listened carefully to Julie's story about the angel who had brought blankets and money. Angel or benevolent neighbor, he knew that the four $20 bills that the man had left would provide just the kind of buffer he needed to catch up on some bills and to be able to provide better for his children.

“Daddy always felt that some nice young man in town or on one of the neighboring farms had learned of our hard times and had taken it upon himself to give us the blankets and the money,” Julie said. “Eighty dollars might not seem like much today, but back in those days of depression in the 1930s, it really helped Daddy to start to climb back on his feet.”

Julie said that her brothers and older sister always believed that her identification of the stranger as an angel who had heard her prayers for blankets and some money was the correct one. They agreed that there wasn't anyone in town or country or anywhere in the county who resembled their handsome, longhaired benefactor.

“Even then, I was a really good artist,” she said, “and I was able to draw a very accurate sketch of the benevolent stranger. We lived in that community for another eight years, and none of us kids ever saw anyone who looked the way he did.

“I will always believe that it was an angel who paid us a visit just before Christmas and helped us to survive that terrible winter. I will believe that until the day I die. And then I know that I will see him again.”

W
e Steigers don't know why we were so surprised when John Fisher told us that he believed in Santa Claus. Perhaps it was because John was fifty-six years old, a graduate of an Ivy League university, and a successful New Hampshire businessman.

John motioned for the waitress to bring a fresh pot of coffee to our booth. “I believe that Santa exists,” he said, “because I saw him bring gifts to my sister Ruby and me when I was eight years old.”

We were sitting in an all-night restaurant with a man we had known for about five years. We had first met him when he attended one of our lectures in New York City in 1987, and we had become friends through a continued correspondence. He was an intelligent man with a quick wit and a compassionate heart, and he had managed to become extremely successful in his retail business without compromising his strict spiritual ethics.

For years, he had wanted to sponsor us in his hometown, and in 1992, we scheduled a seminar with him for the first weekend in December. It would be our final appearance for the year.

Now, we settled back in the restaurant booth and asked him to tell us about the night that he had seen Santa Claus.

When he was young, John began, his family had been very poor. “Of course, when you're a kid, you really have little concept of whether or not your family is rich or poor,” he said. “My father, Stephen Fisher, always managed to have food on the table and made enough as a truck driver to allow us to keep the lights on and the furnace running—although I remember it was always set very low, even during the coldest weather. My mom and Ruby always wore heavy sweaters to keep warm. But when you're three or four, you care very little about social status as long as there is food in your tummy and a roof over your head. It's when you start school that you find out just where you belong on the social pecking order.”

Although the onset of the Christmas season always posed a major challenge to Stephen and Alma Fisher, somehow they managed to come up with a few gifts for Santa to place around the tree on Christmas morning.

“I am certain that, compared to the presents that some of the children in better-off families received, our toys would have been considered cheap,” John said, “but to Ruby and me, they were wonderful.”

When John started school in 1943, World War II had already taken many young fathers from the small town in New Hampshire. Because Stephen Fisher had been born with his right leg considerably shorter than his left, he was not eligible for the draft. “But the fact that so many men had been drafted or had volunteered for the armed forces didn't help Dad find work,” John said. “A lot of the storekeepers, wanting to help with the war effort, hired the wives of men who had left home to fight the enemies overseas, thereby contributing to the support of a fighting man's family. There was nothing wrong with this reasoning in principle, but it left Dad with only handy-man type work that paid very little.”

In spite of these very difficult times, the Fishers always celebrated Christmas to the fullest extent that their meager budget would allow. And John and his sister would lie in their beds on Christmas Eve, barely able to keep from trembling, as they dreamed about Santa Claus and what he might bring them.

“When I was in first grade, all the kids believed in Santa,” John recalled. “We were all true believers who knew that it was Santa Claus who brought all those gifts on Christmas morning. In second grade, the ranks of the believers began to thin, and heretics among us whispered that there was no Santa Claus. Some insisted on voicing the absurd notion that it was only one's parents who placed those gifts under the tree while the children slept. By third grade, I was one of only a few devout believers who were keeping the faith.”

In the summer of 1945, when John was in the third grade, the terrible war ended, and by the holiday season, the stores were filled once again with toys made of metal, rubber, and wood, rather than cardboard, paper, and sawdust. “It was absolutely mind-boggling to walk past the department stores and the dime stores and behold the marvelous array of toys,” John said. “I spotted a red fire engine that I wanted so badly that I became dizzy with longing every time I thought of it. Ruby's dolls had always been made of stockings with button eyes, and she had fallen under the spell of a doll that had a realistic ceramic face with bright blue eyes and golden curls that cascaded down over its forehead.

“We wrote out our list to send to Santa at the North Pole; and as convincing as an eight-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl could be, we vowed our belief in the reality of his being and swore that we had been so good that the very angels adored us.”

That same afternoon, the angels must have been looking the other way when John got into a fight with his friend Randy Sommers, who had called him a baby for still believing in Santa Claus. Dennis Murray, John's best friend, had to break up the fight and make the two boys shake hands.

“Dennis was an agnostic about Santa,” John said. “He still wanted to believe, but I could see in his eyes as we walked home that afternoon that he had doubts.”

What John didn't know at that time was that his father had run a red light with his old pickup in his haste to make as many deliveries as possible that day, and the fine levied against him in traffic court had depleted the meager savings that he had set aside to buy Christmas presents. Stephen Fisher had come home that evening, leaned his head on his wife's shoulder, and gave her the sad news. The children would receive no gifts at all that year. How could he face them on Christmas morning?