It started out to be just a joke. Three of us high school buddies were going to stand on the street in the middle of downtown and act up.

The joke turned out to be on us.

I personally like the Christmas season. The Christmas carols and parties and stuff. But my two buddies always talked about how commercial Christmas is. And how phony most people are at that time of year. You know, all the smiles and best wishes for people you can’t stand.

This year we decided to stand on the sidewalk outside the big department store in the center of town with a big black kettle and a bell. Okay, we knew that the Salvation Army does that and that was going to be the joke. We were about the most opposite of the Salvation Army that you were going to find. We wore grody clothes, had shaggy hair and used some pretty amazing words, some of which haven’t even been discovered yet.

We picked a night that we knew would be busy. The Saturday before Christmas. Len brought his family’s old camping cook kettle, I swiped a bell from the decorations on my sister’s house and our idiot friend, Stan, brought his old grade school trumpet.

There we were standing outside Farnums, Len holding the kettle, me ringing the bell and Stan trying to play Christmas carols on a trumpet he hadn’t even seen for five years.

People were walking past us like we had a serious disease and might be contagious. All except for one lady. She walked with kind of a slow shuffle and as she approached the store she never took her eyes off of us.

"You boys are sure in the Christmas spirit," she said, as she got close. "I remember one Christmas when I was your age and my friends and I went out collecting for charities," she continued, as though we really were interested. "You know that God sends his angels to watch over the Christmas season." With that, she winked at us, dropped something in the kettle, and walked in the store.

Well, we all thought that was a pretty funny thing to say, as we quickly fished out the folded money from the bottom of the kettle. It was a fifty dollar bill! Until that moment I couldn’t even have told you the name of the president on a fifty dollar bill.

There was something about that money that seemed odd. It felt warm, almost like the hot water bottle my mother used to insist on putting on my chest every time I caught a cold.

That was all the incentive we needed. Len started swinging the kettle a little, I rang the bell faster and Stan, poor Stan tried to play every Christmas carol he’d ever heard, every one of which sounded vaguely like Silent Night.

It was like someone turned on a switch. All of a sudden people coming toward the store started coming up to us, fishing in their pockets and purses and putting money in Len’s kettle. We were amazed. Several of them even wished us Merry Christmas. It was sure looking merrier, that was for sure.

For a moment Stan actually sounded pretty good. I looked over at Len and he had a funny look on his face. The best way I can describe it is he looked really peaceful. It almost didn’t look like him. And I was smiling at people who walked by and saying, "God bless you" when they put money in the kettle.

What was going on here?

Then the $50 lady walked out of the store. She wasn’t carrying any packages and she was walking like she wasn’t going to walk up to us, so I stopped bell-ringing and ran up to her.

"Excuse me," I called after her. "Thank you for the money. Could I talk to you for a minute?"

"What about?" she asked.

"Well, see we were just doing this tonight for a joke. There’s almost nothing to do in this town anyway and we just thought it would be funny to stand out in front of Farnums and see if anyone would give us money. No one did. Then you came along and gave us a $50 bill and all of a sudden everyone is giving us money. I don’t get it."

"Well, I can try to explain. You see, it’s like a pump. If you have an old pump on your well it won’t bring up any water unless you prime it. But you pour a little water on it and it’ll draw water real well after that. All I did was prime the pump."

"But why? You could probably see that we weren’t really collecting for a charity."

"Yes, I could. But I’ve always had the belief that good follows good. It just seemed to me that you boys needed to get some good in your lives. My $50 was a small investment in you. I think you’ll know what to do with it." And with that, she walked off down the darkened street.

"I think you’ll know what to do with it," I muttered as I walked back to my buddies. "Yeah, like what?" I said to no one.

Len looked like the Pope, with that silly look on his face and now he was ringing the bell. Stan didn’t seem to notice anything around him as he blew that horn. And I didn’t quite know what to tell them about my conversation with the lady.

It was getting real cold when Farnums closed for the night so we decided to sit in my car and count the money. 450 dollars in ones, fives, tens and the fifty! And a pocketful of change. We couldn’t believe it.

"What should we spend this on?" was the question we were all trying to ask but couldn’t utter.

Then Stan said something that really rocked Len and me. "There’s a family on our street that has been having lots of problems this year. The dad died this spring, the mom is sick a lot and can’t seem to hold a job and the little kids don’t hardly have clothes half the time. I say we give 'em the money."

If you would have told me a day before that we were going to give that much money away I would have laughed myself silly. But now, for some reason, it seemed to make a lot of sense. So we all agreed to meet the next afternoon and take the money over to the family.

The next morning I told my mom what we were going to do. She thought I was sick. In fact, she tried to poke a thermometer in my mouth. I guess I really didn’t sound like myself. But when I told her about the family on Stan's street she just all of a sudden said that she would like to help, too. In fact, she started walking around the kitchen, pulling open cabinets and taking out cans and jars. By that afternoon, she had three boxes of food packed and ready to go.

I also told my dad about our plans. It was really strange to see what happened next. He said he had noticed the family’s house in Stan’s neighborhood and it had a big blue plastic tarp on the roof, a sure sign that the roof had a leak. He had also seen that one window was boarded up and the porch was looking pretty saggy. When I finally left to go to Stan’s house my dad was driving and his tools were in the trunk.

Stan was waiting, as was Len. "You’re not going to believe this," we all tried to say at the same time as I set the three boxes of food down. Stan’s porch was covered with boxes of wrapped presents, clothes and food. Len’s dad and several of his friends from the contracting firm where he worked were standing around. And I could hear Stan’s mom talking real loud on the phone. "I need a Christmas tree with all the decorations. Is there any way you could donate it? Please, it’s real important, it’s for my neighbor who's had a pretty tough year."

Well, we must have looked like a lynch mob about a half hour later as we all walked to the neighbor’s house, except we were all carrying boxes. You should have seen the look on that lady’s face when she opened the door. You should have seen the look on my face when I recognized her as the lady who gave us the fifty dollar bill.

We all tried to explain but we ended up just saying, "Merry Christmas" as we carried the boxes into her house. Several of the men went right to work fixing the roof while others worked on the porch. Then Stan’s mom came over and started preparing a big dinner with part of the food we brought, and wouldn’t you know it, a Farnums truck pulled up outside and two men hauled in a beautiful little Christmas tree, complete with decorations and a sparkling angel on the top. Len, Stan and I stacked the presents and clothes under and around the tree.

The lady just watched us, as her three little kids stood behind her and peeked out around her skirt. She had a smile on her face that has been my memory for 33 years.

I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my entire life than I was that day in December 1965.

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The three of us didn’t see each other much after we graduated that next year.

Len went on to become a priest and is now a bishop. Stan played horn with jazz bands, even made an album before he settled down as the owner of a jazz nightclub in Cleveland. And me, I started a charity called the Global Rescue Mission. This last year we fed and clothed over 75 thousand families in sixty countries around the world.

I guess I’ll never forget the words of that lady. "You know that God sends his angels to watch over the Christmas season." I have never figured out who were the angels that Christmas season, but for some reason I can’t help believing that just for that one Christmas we all were.

Please look for the angels this Christmas.

They look like you and me.

© 1998 Ron Wilbur. All Rights Reserved.