A Lottery Win for Christmas - 1. Chapter 1: A Lottery Win for Christmas

My husband, Yale, and I aren’t rich, but we live comfortably. We both have decent paying jobs and own a duplex house, and we live on one side while renting out the other. We’re very frugal and only go out to eat at a restaurant on special occasions and prefer to rent DVDs and watch them at home, rather than go to the movies. The only thing we do that may seem a bit odd and a little eccentric considering our spending habits is that we spend $2.00 every week to buy a lottery ticket. We figured that since our state uses the money toward education, we merely felt we were financing the school system.

We’re very lucky and have great tenants as well. They’ve been renting the other side of the duplex for the last five years and we’ve never had any problems with them. They’re not loud and don’t throw wild parties, and they always pay the rent on time. That side is rented by a married couple, Wil and Penny Shuler, and they have three children. The oldest and youngest are both male, age 12 and 4, and the middle child is an 8-year-old girl. The children are all very friendly, quite polite, and very respectful, and they often talk to Yale and me when we’re outside, whether we’re relaxing or working to keep the place looking nice.

However, the Shulers have recently had a run of bad luck. Wil was working as a salesperson, but after the company he was working for merged with another firm, those in charge suddenly cut half of the workforce. Unfortunately, most of those laid off came from the company Wil was working for, since the other firm was the larger of the two.

Shortly after he lost his job, Penny’s hours were unexpectedly cut as well. She was working as a cashier at a local retail store, and since a lot of people were having financial problems and not buying as much as before, the company cut all of the cashiers’ hours. And then to make matters worse and add to their woes, their car broke down and they didn’t have the money needed to get it repaired.

We’ve offered to work with them and do as much as we could to help out. We’ve promised not to evict them if they fell behind on their rent until they got back on their feet, and we’ve been doing other things to help out as well. We’ll drive them places when we’re available, such as taking them to the grocery story or the unemployment office, since Yale and I both have jobs that allow us to work from home. We also allow them to come over at night and use our internet, since they couldn’t afford to keep their cable and internet. We also allow the children to come over to watch TV after school, as long as they do it quietly and don’t bother us, since we’re still working at that time. All I can say is that we’re doing our best to make this work for them.

We also invited them to join us for Thanksgiving dinner, since we knew they’d have a better meal this way and it would save them an additional expense. We also let them know they were invited to join us for Christmas dinner as well, and they thanked us for being so kind.

Believe it or not, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving our numbers hit on the lottery. Oh, it wasn’t the jackpot or a million dollar prize, but we won $10,000, so Yale and I talked about how we should use the money.

“It’s not like we have any immediate needs to use it on, so what do you want to do with the money?” I asked.

“Well, Mason, we could put it in a CD or invest it until it is needed.”

“Actually, I might have a better idea. What if we use the money to give the Shulers a Merry Christmas?”

“I think that’s a wonderful idea, and there’s a lot we can do to help them.”

We recruited some of our other neighbors that we knew were friends with the Shuler family. We asked them to help us in our planning, but we swore them to secrecy first, since we didn’t want Wil and Penny to know who was doing these things. We had the women ask their children to find out what the Shuler children wanted for Christmas and then they could let us know what their children found out. As soon as we knew what the Shuler children wanted, we set about doing our Christmas shopping for them. We also labeled the gifts to indicate who they were for.

In addition to buying presents for the children, I approached my mechanic and asked him to contact the family so he could tow their car to the shop and repair it. After swearing him to secrecy about not letting them know who was doing this, I merely advised him to tell the Shulers that a Secret Santa was going to pay to have it repaired.

He drove his tow truck over to collect the car on Christmas Eve Day and I overheard the conversation he had with the Shulers.

“We didn’t contact you to pick up our car,” Wil explained.

“I know, it was an old guy with white hair and a white beard that came into my shop and told me what he wanted me to do,” our mechanic ad libbed. “He even gave me a large cash deposit so I could get started. He also said he’d call me later to find out if it was going to cost more.”

“And you didn’t get his name?” Penny asked.

“He gave me a large enough deposit that I wasn’t worried, but he did sign the work order. His signature was difficult to read, but I believe he wrote S. Claws, C-L-A-W-S.”

Although we couldn’t see them, we imagined that Wil and Penny looked at each other, smiled, and rolled their eyes as the mechanic drove off with their car.

On Christmas Eve, Yale and I threw a Christmas party for some of the people that we work with. We thought it would be nice way to get better acquainted with each one, since we didn’t see them very often while we were spending so much time working from home. We also talked one of our co-workers into putting on the Santa suit that we’d rented and taking the gifts next door to the Shuler family.

The man we recruited was rather large, so he didn’t need any extra padding for him to fill out the suit, and he also had a deep voice that resonated when he spoke. Not only that, but we wanted someone else to play Santa so none of the Shulers would recognize one of our voices and ruin the surprise. They’ll probably still suspect that we’re responsible for doing these things, but we had a plan for that as well. After we loaded up Santa’s bag with the gifts, we sent him to knock on their door.

“Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas!” we heard him say in his booming voice when they answered the door. “Santa has heard this family has been very good this year, even though the times have been very rough on you, so Santa has a few gifts to help improve the Shuler family’s Christmas. Since I wanted to deliver them to you personally and you don’t have a chimney, I decided to knock on your door and drop them off before I make my rounds to all of the other families.”

After he handed out each of the gifts and emptied the bag, he snuck around to use the rear door to re-enter our side of the duplex again while the Shulers were inspecting everything. When they realized he had gone, they all put on their coats and came over to our side to see if one of us was Santa.

When they arrived, Santa was in our bedroom changing out of the Santa suit and into his own clothes again, and when they asked if one of us had been Santa, everyone at the party assured them we’d never left. They were certain that we must have done this for them, so they kept asking our guests questions hoping to trip them up, but our guests continued to assure them that we’d been at the party the entire time. Puzzled and scratching their heads, they returned to their own side of the duplex and our guests got a big kick out of being part of our Christmas surprise.

When the Shulers came over to join us for Christmas dinner the next day, they continued asking us questions about the visit from Santa.

“Yale and Mason, you had to be responsible for Santa’s visit last night,” Penny insisted.

“No, we were partying with our co-workers the entire time and I had no idea what you were talking about when you came over to ask us about it.”

“Then you must have sent the guy from the garage to our house earlier in the day to tow our car away so he could repair it,” Wil followed. “He said an older guy with long white hair and a white beard gave him the money to have it fixed.”

“Does that description fit either of us?” Yale asked.

“No, but you could have worn a disguise,” Wil insisted.

“I’m afraid not,” Yale responded. “We spent the entire day cleaning, cooking, and getting things set up for our Christmas party, and then our guests started showing up just before 6:00. Maybe it really was Santa that did all of those things for you.”

“Other than the man from the garage fixing your car, what else did you get?”

The kids quickly rattled off the various toys and other items they’d received. They also told us that they’d been afraid they wouldn’t get anything for Christmas this year, because their parents didn’t have much money.

“It seems that money is no object for Santa,” I reasoned.

“Obviously not,” Penny replied as she stared at me and then Yale, “because Santa gave us two Visa gift cards for $1,000 each. One had a note attached saying it was for whatever clothing our family might need, and the other one had another note attached that said it was for food and gas.”

“Wow! That’s amazing!” Yale stated.

“It certainly is,” Wil agreed. “Are you sure you guys didn’t have anything to do with those things?”

“I’m afraid we’re not that rich, so it must have really been Santa,” I replied, “but let’s sit down to eat before the food gets cold, because it’s all ready.”

We had a wonderful meal together filled with Christmas cheer, and the Shulers kept trying to get us to slip up and admit that we had something to do with their unexpected Christmas bonanza. Yale and I both managed to maintain our cool and kept denying that we had anything to do with it. Before they left, however, they all gave us a hug and thanked us for the wonderful day and we accepted their thanks for the Christmas meal.

No one we’d involved in this process ever let them know that we’d been responsible for arranging that Christmas for them, although the couple still insists we must have had something to do with it. We received our present from them as well, and it was seeing the smiles on their faces and the joy in their eyes because of the presents they’d received. After all, isn’t that what Christmas is all about? Didn’t the Three Wise Men set the precedent when they gave the gifts to the Christ child? Yale and I were merely following their example.

THE END.