The Grinch tried to steal my family’s Christmas this year. But in the end, we were the ones who discovered the true meaning of the day.
It all started when my husband and I decided to spend the holidays with extended family out of town. Knowing we’d be gone for a while, we started to strategically empty our pantry in the days leading up to the trip. Because there’s no point in having a house full of food if no one’s home to eat it.
It seemed like a good plan – until the night before we were scheduled to leave.
Just as my kids had cleared the pantry and were licking the last few crumbs of stale granola bars from their fingers, he struck.
The Grinch. Or, as the weather service calls him, the bomb cyclone. And you know it’s serious weather when the meteorologist uses words like “bomb” and “cyclone” to describe it. In a matter of hours, our holiday plans were buried under a mound of snow and ice.
We had nowhere to go, no family to see, and no food to eat.
I’m not going to lie. For a while, there was no joy in Whoville. My family spent Christmas Eve moping around the house, complaining about the weather, and begrudgingly ordering takeout.
But by Christmas morning, we’d found our holiday spirit.
Four hours (and one long trip to the only supermarket that was open) later, we finally sat down to a lovely, if makeshift, Christmas dinner. And it was wonderful. No one even seemed to mind that the table was decorated with grocery store flowers and the wrapped gifts all came straight from the magazine aisle.
In the end, it turned out to be one of the nicest holidays I can remember. And we learned the very same lesson as the Grinch himself.
Maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more.
