The ornament on the top of our Christmas tree is, as has been usual for the past twenty-some years, a rather crinkly five dollar bill afixed to the tree with a rubber band. This five dollar bill has particularly poignant meaning for my wife Nina and me.

Twenty-some years ago we were living in the Rust Belt in the eastern mid-west. In early December of that year I got a telephone call from our bank telling me that we were significantly overdrawn and that they were holding several checks for payment, including our mortgage check. I went to the bank and found that someone had made four two-hundred dollar withdrawals from our account using an ATM card. After filling out all the paperwork to attest that neither Nina nor I had withdrawn the money (it had been withdrawn from local ATM machines a week or so earlier when we were not in town), I took out a ninety-day loan from the bank to cover the overdrafts and pending checks as well as a little money to live on until the next paycheck.

That evening we told the family why Christmas was going to be very sparce that year. We decided as a family that we had enough money to buy a Christmas tree and decorate it, even though there wouldn’t be much, if anything, beneath the tree on Christmas morning. We bought the tree the next day, put it in the stand in the family room, and went to the Church Christmas Party that evening. When we got home from the party we discovered that people had come in while we were gone and had decorated the tree … with five dollar bills. There were forty of them on the tree; all crisp, new, beautiful five dollar bills. We were astounded. We also decided that we would not try to figure out who the Good Samaritans were … we wanted to think that any of our friends might have done it. We kept one of the five dollar bills and put it on the top of the tree every year as a remembrance.

The story doesn’t end there, though. A few days later the bank called and said they had the surveillance pictures from the ATM machines where the withdrawals had been made. We went to the bank to see if we could identify the culprit and found that all four pictures were of a young man who had been staying with us named Chris.

Chris had been a good friend of our oldest son who, at this time, was away from home serving a mission for the Church. After high school Chris had some difficult times resulting in him being sent away from home. Shortly after that his parents divorced and left the area. Then in mid November of that year, Chris and a young woman appeared at our door. They were tired, ragged, hungry, wet, and very depressed. Hitch-hiking around the country had lost it’s glamor. The girl wanted to go home and Chris didn’t really have a home to go to. We took them in and contacted the girls parents, who were very happy to know where their daughter was. They made arrangements for her to go home on the bus. Chris, meanwhile, stayed with us. He found a job in the nearby town and seemed to be getting back on his feet.

After Thanksgiving, Nina and I along with some friends made a five-day trip to Washington, D.C. to go to the temple and have a small vacation. While we were gone, Chris found my ATM card in my bedroom dresser drawer, along with the PIN that I had put in the same envelope. The card was to Nina’s bank account, so I didn’t think I had a reason to carry the card with me. The temptation was too great and for four days while we were gone, Chris withdrew the maximum amount possible each day from Nina’s bank account.

This was now a criminal matter. I went home, explained the situation to Chris (who wasn’t very surprised; I’m sure he knew that sometime he would be caught), and drove him to the Sheriff’s office where he was arrested and put in jail. A few days later the county prosecutor talked with us about a possible plea bargain. We were agreeable with a guilty plea, a jail sentence and parole, but with the jail time suspended pending successful completion of a specific drug and alcohol treatment program.

That was the last time we saw Chris, but not the last time we heard from him. About six months later an envelope arrived in the mail with a much-worn money order for $40. A few weeks later another money order arrived, then another. Over the next year or so, Chris made complete restitution. A few years later we heard through the grapevine that he had moved to the mountain west, found a nice young lady, married, and become a good husband and father. The arrest and treatment had been the catalyst for him to turn his life around.

My wife Nina volunteers at the Pocatello Womens Correctional Center here in town, which houses some three hundred women in state prison for felonious criminal activity, mostly drugs. This past Thanksgiving evening I went with her to the prison where she was going to do a Christmas craft with any of the women there who wished to make one. I sat at a table with a young woman who was in prison for drugs … primarily meth (a drug which has no redeeming value and is a scourge on the land). She told me that she had so burned her bridges with her family that they kicked her out of the house. Her grandparents took her in to try and help her turn her life around. For her it was another way to feed her drug habit and she stole a large amount of money from her grandparents which was the crime that put her into state prison for several years.

I asked her about her relationship with her family. She said, “I don’t have a relationship with my family. I think they all hate me … except for my grandparents. The call me when they can and sometimes come down to see me. I don’t understand why they still love me.”

I do. I have a five-dollar-bill-Christmas-tree-topper and the Christmas lesson that goes with it.

I wish you a very Merry Christmas!