A Short Christmas Story

I have often wondered what the holiday season would be like without a last-minute dash to the department store for a gift I forgot to purchase. Honestly, I don’t think it’s in my nature to ever know, and this past year was certainly no different from any other I can remember.

Three days before Christmas, I found myself browsing through a large selection of furry socks, the ones I always get for my wife, whether she needs, wants, or actually uses them. I wonder about that for a moment but shrug it off, because at this point, it is a tradition and I just do it.

Having chosen several pairs I think she will like, I leave the women’s apparel section and take them up front to pay. The lines are a little long but I quickly find the shortest one, or the one that seems to be moving the fastest, anyway. 

As the line shuffles forward I turn my attention to the cashier, an elderly woman wearing a Santa hat with flashing lights on it. Her face is withered and her narrow shoulders are slumped a bit, but her disposition is cheery and her eyes, I notice, are quite striking, clear, youthful, and laughing. I imagine that she must have been a very beautiful woman when she was young. 

I laid the furry socks on the counter and she picked them up and asked, “Have you been naughty or nice?”

“Somewhere in between,” I answered as she turned the socks over in her hand, looking at them with those striking eyes.

“I like these,” she smiles, “For your wife?”

“It’s a holiday tradition,” I answered, nodding my head. “I don’t know where they all wind up, but I keep on buying them.”

She scans the furry socks, but then pauses for a moment before looking back up at me. “Every year my husband has bought me a stuffed teddy bear for Christmas,” she says with a smile. She seems to wander in thought for a second but then places the socks in the bag. “I have a whole room-full,” she continued. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with all of them.”  I smiled in response as I waited for her to finish.

“But there’ll be no bears this year,” she said, handing me the bag. Once again she paused, staring at me with those blue eyes which, I could see, were now beginning to shimmer with tears. Her smile slowly faded as I suddenly realized what she was telling me. 

“I lost him last summer,” she said, her lower lip trembling, almost imperceptibly. 

“I am very sorry,” was all I could think to say. I stood there for a second or two until she finally smiled, nodded her head, and turned her attention to the next person in line. I heard her ask if they’d been naughty or nice as I turned to leave.

I had barely left the store before my own eyes began to well up. Suddenly, those silly, furry socks didn’t seem so silly anymore. And by the time I made it to the car, the tears were flowing hard and I didn’t care who may or may not have noticed.  

I wrapped those socks with great care as if they were the most precious of things. I neatly filled out the tag and placed the package gently under the tree beside the diamond earrings and the gold necklace I had previously wrapped. 

On Christmas morning, with all the opened gifts lying upon the kitchen table, I told my wife the tale of the woman with the striking blue eyes and a room-full of teddy bears. I found myself choking on the words as I struggled to finish the story.  

“I love getting these socks,” my wife finally said as she slipped into a pair and left the room for a moment. She returned with a big cardboard box which she placed on the table, removing the lid for me to see. I leaned forward to find it completely full of furry socks. I smiled as she told me she had worn every pair, but only until they were replaced with the new ones each Christmas morning.