People everywhere this holiday season will read a short Christmas story about neighbors selflessly helping a widow and her three young children.
The story appears this time of year on social media, in church bulletins, in email chains, in small-town newspapers and other places, but rarely with credit to the author.
“Pa never had much compassion for the lazy, or those who squandered their means and then never had enough for the necessities,” the story begins. “But for those who were genuinely in need, his heart was as big as all outdoors.”
I first read the story several years ago when someone posted it on a popular social media site. I instantly fell in love with the tale of generosity and caring for fellow human beings. It became my favorite story because it perfectly captures how humility can triumph over ego.
“This is how people should live and treat each other,” the story says.
Many readers have wept in empathy with the characters. I was so intrigued by the beauty of the anonymous tale that I had to discover the author. That led to a years long search that revealed a creator with a story as heartwarming and inspirational as his masterpiece.
In part two of this two-part column, you’ll meet Rian B. Anderson, 72, a lifelong Utah sheepherder. Anderson wrote the story years ago as a gift for his six children. It circulated electronically for years before it was published in book form in 2001 as “A Christmas Prayer.”
But first, let me summarize his story for you and tell you why it became my favorite.
Matt Miles, 15, narrates the story, which takes place on Christmas Eve in 1881. The story is set in a small, rural village in an unspecified state, somewhere on the rugged frontier. Matt was pouting because there wasn’t enough money to buy a rifle he wanted.
“So after supper was over, I took my boots off and stretched out in front of the fireplace and waited for Pa to get down the old Bible. I was still feeling sorry for myself and to be honest, I wasn’t in much of a mood to read scriptures.”
Matt’s father tells him to bundle up, that they’re going out into the cold night. Matt is puzzled as they have already done all the chores. He then becomes even more dismayed to discover his father has hitched up the work team of horses to the big sled.
“Whatever it was we were going to do wasn’t going to be a short, quick, little, job,” Matt thinks to himself.
Then Matt’s father pulls the sled around to the woodshed and they put on the high sideboards. Then they load the sled with wood that Matt spent all summer hauling down from the mountain and all fall sawing into blocks and splitting.
Matt finally asks his father what they are doing.
“You been by the Widow Jensen’s lately?” the father replies.
The widow’s husband had died a year earlier and left the widow with three children, the oldest being 8.
“I rode by just today,” Pa said. “Little Jakey was out digging around in the woodpile trying to find a few chips. They’re out of wood, Matt.”
Once they finished loading wood, Pa retrieved a ham and side of bacon from the smokehouse. Then he got a sack of flour and another sack containing shoes for the widow and children and a little bit of candy.
“Little Jakey just had gunnysacks wrapped around his feet when he was out in the woodpile this morning,” Pa says.
They rode 2 miles to the widow’s house. When they got there they quietly unloaded all the wood. Then they took the meat, flour, shoes and candy to the door and knocked. The widow let them in and was moved to tears by their generosity. The father sent Matt outside for wood to get the fire going. Matt felt filled with joy.
“I had given presents at Christmas many times before, but never when it had made so much difference,” he says. “I could see we were literally saving these people’s lives.”
The father then hands out candy and the widow and children try on their shoes, which all fit. Then the father invites the widow and children over for Christmas dinner at their house and tells them they will be back the next day to pick them up.
On the ride home, the father tells Matt what happened.
“Your ma and me have been tucking a little money away here and there all year so we could buy that rifle for you, but we didn’t have quite enough.”
By chance, a man who owed Pa money squared up with him out of the blue. Pa was on his way to town that morning to buy Matt the rifle when he passed the Widow Jensen’s and saw Jakey scrounging for wood chips.
“I knew what I had to do. So, son, I spent the money for shoes and a little candy for those children. I hope you understand.”
The story’s brevity enhances its beauty. The short length made it easy to share and enabled its reach on social media. The thin paperback, “A Christmas Prayer,” which I purchased used on Amazon for about $3 plus shipping, amounts to 10 pages. The last two are an author’s note about the 2,000-word story.
“From a very early age, I have spent my summers high in the Manti-La Sal mountains, and my winters on Utah’s west desert, herding sheep,” Anderson wrote.
He describes how he wrote the story one winter while alone in the snowy, northern desert where temperatures drop to 20 below zero Fahrenheit around Christmastime.
“I live in a ‘sheep camp’; it is a trailer, roughly seven by fourteen feet.”
He talks about how burning wood in a stove heats the trailer and how he lets the fire go out at night to make it more comfortable for sleeping. By morning, his fruit and vegetables are frozen.
Anderson dedicated the book to his six children: Nick, Autumn, Adrian, Janille, Natalie and Tonya.
“It was a week or so before Christmas and I was thinking of what I could give my children that would have lasting value — something more than a meaningless toy that might be forgotten five minutes after it was unwrapped,” he wrote in the author’s note.
Anderson’s story is my favorite because I believe people tend to think of themselves and place their own needs and wants above those of others. It may seem counterintuitive, but I have found you can be much happier if you think of others first instead of yourself.
Anderson addressed this belief in his author’s note.
“And so you have the conflict — on the one hand satisfying your own needs; and on the other, the critical needs of someone else. You can fulfill one or the other, but not both. Which do you choose?”
In part two, I’ll share how I determined the identity of the story’s author, how I connected with him and what he had to say about sharing his gift with the world and rarely receiving the credit.
Ted Slowik is a columnist for the Daily Southtown.
