The Christmas story I’m about to tell you is both a true tale and a tale full of truth.
On a bitterly cold afternoon not many days before Christmas, 7-year-old Juliette’s mother picked her up from school and drove to the nearby mall. Weeks before she had promised Juliette a special new dress for Christmas, but the flurry of relatives at Thanksgiving had kept her from making good on her promise until now.
Juliette’s eyes danced when her mother told her, “Today’s the day. Let’s go find you a dress before Dad comes home for supper.”
In several shops they looked at dresses, all of them pretty, but none of them quite the dress Juliette had conjured up in almost a month of dreaming.
“Can we go look in Lady Lou’s?” Juliette begged. It was an up-scale store all the way at the other end of the mall, but Juliette’s mom said OK. After all, half the fun of getting a new dress is the time spent shopping, and she couldn’t remember when she’d had more fun than shopping with Juliette. Just her and her precious daughter alone. “How quickly they grow!” she thought.
In the mall’s central court, Juliette spotted the huge Christmas tree adorned with hundreds of silk angels. On each angel was the name of a child who needed someone to provide them a coat or a dress for Christmas.
“Can I take an angel?” Juliette surprised her mother with the earnestness of her request.
“Yes, Honey,” her mother replied with some uncertainty, “but we only have enough money to buy one dress. If you choose to buy one for some other little girl, we won’t be able to get one for you this Christmas.” Without hesitating an instant Juliette reached for an angel.
Down the mall they continued, but now on quite a different mission than before. With far more excitement and joy than when she was shopping for herself, Juliette searched in store after store until she found the “perfect” dress for the little girl named on her angel.
“That dress will be so pretty on you!” The sales lady smiled at Juliette.
“It’s not for me,” Juliette replied, holding up her angel. And her mother explained the decision Juliette had just made at the angel tree.
“You’re a very unusual little girl,” the sales lady acknowledged quietly, her heart touched by the drama she found herself a part of. “That dress,” she whispered as Juliette and her mother walked away, “is indeed the gift of an angel.”