The Peddler’s Gift

Hi friend,

I couldn’t wait to share the first story in my new holiday series, Stories from the Heart of the Piney Woods.

Today’s story is called The Peddler’s Gift, a tender, magical tale about a young girl who learns that the best Christmas gifts aren’t wrapped at all… they’re carried in the heart.

You’ll meet Mama, our crooked little tinsel-covered tree, a Christmas feast that could rival any banquet, and a mysterious peddler who shows up on a cold country road with a message that still rings true today: the fastest way to quiet envy is to count what matters, and then share it.

Pour a cup of cocoa, find a quiet spot, and let this story take you home to the Piney Woods.

After today, the rest of my Christmas stories will be available exclusively to subscribers only, so if this story warms your heart, please share it with your friends, book clubs, or organizations. I’d love for them to join us on this journey of faith, reflection, and nostalgia.

And if your group would like to discuss the stories, or invite me to speak about the lessons behind them, I’d be honored to join the conversation.

Thank you for reading, sharing, and keeping the spirit of kindness alive this Christmas season.

With love,
PJ Hamilton
Stories that heal. Lessons that strengthen. One purposeful pause at a time.

A Personal Note from PJ

When I sat down to write The Peddler’s Gift, I could almost smell Mama’s yeast rolls and see that crooked little tree with its clumps of tinsel shining like a disco ball in the corner. We didn’t have much, but somehow those Christmases still felt full, full of laughter, smells from the kitchen, and the kind of love that doesn’t need to be wrapped.

Back then, I didn’t understand that the best gifts weren’t the ones under the tree. They were the ones around it, Mama’s voice humming carols, the warmth of the oven on a cold morning, and the way we all counted our blessings instead of boxes.

This story is my way of honoring that time and maybe reminding you, too, that sometimes the smallest gifts are the ones that stay with us the longest.

Enjoy!

The winter we learned not to measure Christmas by counting boxes was the year the wind slipped through the old trailer’s seams and painted frost flowers on the corners of the windows. The pine out front still leaned toward the ditch like it was shy and didn’t want to be looked at for too long. Inside, our Christmas tree; short, scraggly, and faithful, sat on a wooden crate near the heater, wearing a set of blinking lights, a few shiny balls Mama found on sale that year, and a storm of tinsel.

When I say “tinsel,” I don’t mean the delicate cascade you see in store windows. I mean the kind that came in its own crinkled little pack, thick, shiny strands wound tight around a piece of cardboard. Mama would show us how to do it right: take just a few threads at a time, lay them gently across a branch, let them catch the light. We’d nod solemnly like we understood the sacred art of tinsel placement.

For about five minutes, we were model decorators, patient, deliberate, whispering “ooh” and “ahh” every time the lights blinked just so. But patience has a short shelf life when you’re a kid with your own tinsel pack and big ideas. Before long, we were tossing it by the handful, great glittering clumps that fell where they may, because my little brother and sister believed more was more, and grace came in piles.

Mama would wait until we were asleep, then stand with one hand on her hip and her hair falling loose, carefully teasing the clumps into strands, her fingers working toward “just right.” By morning, the tree would be transformed, still humble, still ours, but somehow beautiful, the lights catching the tinsel like stars tangled in Spanish moss.

It wasn’t perfect by magazine standards, but to us, it was a masterpiece, proof that even a handful of sparkle could make a small space shine.

We didn’t get much for Christmas. One gift, maybe. A stocking with an orange, the kind that leaves your hands smelling bright and your mouth tingling, and a few pieces of candy rattling in the toe like tiny maracas. But we had a feast that would make your knees go weak. That was Mama’s gift, every year, as sure as the sun. Homemade yeast rolls that rose up proud in their pans; cornbread dressing smothered in giblet gravy; cranberry sauce that slid out of the can with lines like a tree trunk; mashed potatoes whipped to a cloud; green beans a little squeaky between your teeth; and pies, heaven help us, pies for days. Chocolate (at least 3), lemon bright as a hymn, coconut like snow, and pecan, because we were East Texas through and through.

Mama made the pies so early, three, sometimes four days before, so they’d be ready for the big day. That meant the crust surrendered before we got there. On Christmas afternoon I’d slide a fork under the glossy top and pull the filling away, sweet and shining, and leave the soggy crust behind like an old shoe. Wasteful, maybe. But in a house where so much felt thin, those thick bites of soft, sweet middle were a kind of mercy.

I didn’t mind our Christmas, not really, until I learned the language of wanting from other kids. In December, the bus filled with catalogs and big talk, with fingers pointed at things with batteries and secret compartments. Bikes with sparkling streamers, dolls that blinked, game consoles with controllers that looked like spaceships. I learned how to say “me too” with a smile I tried on in the mirror, even though it didn’t quite fit.

That year, the wanting grew bones. It stomped around my room at night and made lists on notebook paper with hearts over the i’s. It whispered that a bigger tree meant a bigger love, that more boxes meant more belonging.

By Christmas Eve, wanting had me by the elbow. I needed air, the kind that smells like pine and cold earth, and the kind of quiet you only find when you let your feet do the thinking.

I wrapped my coat tight and slipped out for a walk down the old county road. The stars were sharp and close enough to touch, and the gravel popped under my boots. I wasn’t going far, just to where the fence line curved and the road met the highway, but the night felt wide and listening.

That’s where I saw him.

An old man with a cart, parked near the bend, his lantern flickering against the cold. He had a cart like a tiny wagon, pulled by nothing but his own two hands, its wooden sides stacked with boxes and baskets and curious things that glimmered under the lamp: buttons in a jar, marbles that held secrets when you looked close, spools of ribbon the color of sunrise, and toy parts, lonely wheels, a tin soldier’s arm, a music box key without its song.

He wore a coat two sizes too big and a hat with a brim that tipped down like he meant to keep his eyes private. But when he looked at me, it felt like he’d known me for years.

“Evenin’,” he said, and his voice sounded like a porch swing. “You’re out late.”

“I’m just walking,” I said, which was true and not true at the same time.

“Walkin’s good,” he nodded. “A body can hear her own heart when her feet are busy.”

I laughed without meaning to. “Mine’s loud tonight.”

He studied me for a moment that didn’t feel like staring. “You’re carryin’ disappointment,” he said gently, like a doctor lifting a sleeve. “Heavy kind.”

I stiffened. “I’m fine.”

“Course you are,” he said, not arguing. “Wanna see somethin’?”

He reached into a box and pulled out a button, round, pearly, with a tiny crack like a smile. “Courage,” he said, placing it on his palm. “Sew it on the inside of your coat, right where your ribs get tender. Reminds you to stand up even when your knees tremble.”

Before I could answer, he picked up a marble so blue it seemed to hold a sky inside it. “Wonder,” he said. “For when the world tries to make you older than you need to be.”

Then a bell, small as a thimble. He held it by the loop and let it rest in the air. No sound. “Kindness,” he whispered. “This bell won’t ring ‘til you notice someone who’s hurting and move toward ‘em. It’s particular like that.”

I swallowed. The wanting inside me shifted from stomping to listening. “How much for the bell?” I asked. “And the marble. And…”

He shook his head. “Can’t sell you what you already have.”

“I don’t have any of that.”

He smiled at me the way a teacher smiles when she puts an A on a paper. “Don’t you? Your mama’s hands make feasts out of thin air. That’s kindness with flour on it. That lemon pie you scrape with a fork? That’s wonder, kiddo, wonder that sweetness still shows up early, even if the crust gives out. And courage?” He tipped his hat toward the road behind me. “You walked out here alone to talk down the noise inside your chest. Seems like courage and you are on speaking terms.”

I didn’t know whether to argue or cry. He looked past me, toward the direction of home, as if he could see through the dark, through our thin walls, through the tree in its tinsel armor, all the way into our living room where the stockings waited like small canoes under the heater.

“My friends get everything,” I said finally, because it was the truest part. “New clothes, new games, big trees. We get… one gift. Maybe. And an orange.”

“Ah,” he breathed, like a pastor about to pray. “The envy ache. Hits hard this time of year.”

He reached into the cart and came up with a box not much bigger than a bar of soap, tied with twine. He placed it in my hands. It had weight, the way a promise has weight.

“This is for you,” he said. “But don’t open it here.”

“I can’t take…”

“You can,” he said kindly, “and you will. It ain’t a trade. It’s a reminder.”

When I looked up, ready to argue properly, he was already moving down the road, cart whispering over the gravel, coat flapping like a crow’s wing in the wind. I watched until he slipped past the curve and was taken by the dark, the way a secret returns to wherever secrets live.

I ran home with the box under my arm, breath fogging the cold. The trailer glowed like a lantern. Inside, the tree blinked and the room smelled faintly of yeast and cinnamon and something warm I couldn’t name. Mama was humming in the kitchen. My little brother had fallen asleep on the floor with a toy car under his cheek, like he was dreaming of leaving and forgetting he could take us with him.

In our room, I turned on the lamp and sat on the edge of my bed. The twine slipped away like it had been waiting for my fingers. Inside the box was a pinecone, painted gold, each scale tipped carefully, as if someone had taken their time with it. There was a note on folded paper, thin as an onion skin:

For the girl who already carries the best gifts of all.
Look where the light is and count again.

I held the pinecone in my palm. It fit like it knew me.

The next morning, our Christmas looked about the same as always. The stockings were light but cheerful. I peeled my orange and shared the sections, letting the juice shine on our fingers. My one gift was a pair of mittens Mama had knitted from leftover yarn, one cuff green, the other red, both hands nearly the same size. My brother got a little metal truck that steered with imagination. My baby sister got barrettes shaped like daisies to tame her wild hair and my older sister, got a baton for twirling. We said each other’s names when we handed things over, as if the speaking was part of the giving.

Then we ate like people who knew joy could sit at a small table and make it feel like a banquet hall. Rolls, dressing, giblet gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, and the parade of pies. I told Mama, quietly, that the lemon was my favorite this year. She said, “Good, baby,” and gave me the first slice, her eyes soft. I scraped the filling away from the soggy crust and loved it, unashamed.

Sometimes all that changes is your counting.

I counted the warm room and called it shelter.
Counted the orange and called it sun.
Counted Mama’s hands and called them miracles.
Counted the tinsel’s wild clumps, because my brother and sister believed beauty could also be messy, and called it glory.
Counted the way the pinecone shone from the center of our tree, where I tucked it like a star had fallen and decided to stay.

Years later, I kept that pinecone on my writing desk. When the world tried to convince me that bigger meant better, I’d roll it in my palm and remember the old peddler, how he named what I already had. Courage, wonder, kindness, not wrapped, but carried. Not bought, but lived. That Christmas did not make the wanting disappear forever. But it taught me a secret: the fastest way to quiet envy is to count what matters and then share it.

Sometimes my gifts were still small in the eyes of the world. But I learned how to see their size from the inside out, how the orange in a stocking can taste like sunrise; how a soggy crust can’t ruin the sweet; how tinsel, even in clumps, can catch the light just the same.

When people ask if Santa is real, I think of the peddler’s cart, the bell that won’t ring until kindness moves, the marble holding a sky, the button with a hairline crack that still does its job. I think of Mama humming in a kitchen where miracles rose in pans, of my brother’s toy car and my sister’s daisy barrettes, of a pinecone tipped with gold that told the truth without saying a word.

Real? Yes. Real like breath on a window. Real like light on tinsel. Real like a gift you carry out into the cold and share.

And every Christmas, when the tree is up and the house is quiet, I take the pinecone in my hand and I count again.

Like what you just read?

This is the first in my Holiday Stories from the Heart of the Piney Woods series, magical, meaningful tales about what truly matters.
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