You never know when a great idea will hit you. For me, that happened five years ago when a friend and neighbor told me about an incident with her five-year-old middle son.
She said she found him in the kitchen, staring into the empty tin that had held the cookies I’d baked for them. Since he knew they’d eaten the last of the cookies the day before, she asked him what he was doing. He gave her a soulful look and said he’d hoped the tin had magically refilled.
She then explained they’d recently heard a story about a boy who, after putting a piece of candy in his pocket, had discovered that no matter how many times he gave it away, he always had another piece.
Hearing this, I immediately knew what to do for Christmas that year. I found the perfect tin, and when I gave my friends their Christmas candy, I gave their three boys this special tin filled with Christmas cookies.
What the boys didn’t know, though, was I’d given their mother a variety of extra cookies. When the tin was almost empty, she refilled it on the sly from this secret stash.
I wish I could have seen their faces that first time when they realized the almost empty tin had magically refilled.
Of course, I didn’t want to be supplying magic-tin cookie refills for the rest of my life, so I limited the number of refills they received. Before she replenished the tin the last time, their mother included the note I’d given her. It explained that because the boys had been good that year, they’d been gifted this “enchanted tin of Christmas cookies and its three magic refills.”
The Magic Christmas Cookie Tin
This year, the magic tin of Christmas cookies made its fifth appearance. (And, yes, it’s the same tin every year.)
While I’m sure the older boys (now 13 and 10) have figured out where the refills really come from, that doesn’t make it any less magical.
After all, the magic of Christmas is real, and you should never be too old to believe in it.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks