I found a box of Christmas decorations in my attic. It’s filled with old trinkets and ornaments from childhood.

There’s the ornament I made in pre-school—a petrified gingerbread man who’s missing half of his face.

An ornament from fifth grade—a miniature Bible, splayed open to the book of Hebrews. It reads: “It is appointed for man to die once, then comes judgement.” A little uplifting treasure from a fundamentalist childhood.

And there’s the clay figurine I made for my father. It is an uneven lump, supposed to be man, eating oysters. But it looks more like a cow eating a ball of gray-colored mud.

I remember when I brought it home in my bookbag. I remember how the sun was in the early afternoon.

I remember my father was seated at the head of the table, asking what I learned in class.

Mama interjected, “Show Daddy what you made in school today.”

I presented him this clay atrocity. He looked at it and said, “What is it?”

“What’s it look like?” I said.

“A Jersey cow

eating a rock?”

“No,” I said. “It’s you, and you’re eating an oyster.”

“Why’re my nostrils so big?”

“Teacher told us to explore symbolism.”

“That means I’m a Holstein?”

“It means that we can make our parents look like whatever we want.”

“So you made me a cow?”

“No, I made you a cow-BOY, see the little hat?”

“I look like a hot-air balloon with a face.”

He hung it on the tree and tapped it with his finger to make it sway. “That’s a big oyster I’m eating,” he remarked.

Oysters are a tradition in my family.

That following Christmas, we awoke early. He wore the robe my mother made for him—he did not wear a robe any other day of the calendar year. Among my gifts were a few records, slacks, some…

The University of Alabama took the field against the Georgia Bulldogs this afternoon for the SEC Championship football game. Tensions were high in our town.

I ran into a man at the gas station who wore a Bulldogs T-shirt. We pumped gas beside each other.

“‘Bama sucks,” he said, pointing at my Alabama shirt.

“Roll Tide,” I remarked.

Then he started laughing.

“Aw, I’m just kidding,” he went on. “I know Alabama doesn’t suck, but I sure hope they do tonight.”

I told him I would pray for his eternal salvation.

During kickoff, I was still running errands. In fact, I was standing in a long supermarket checkout line. I counted eight shoppers in line who were watching the game on their phones.

And when the Bulldogs scored their first touchdown, a Georgia fan shouted at his phone, “YES! TAKE THAT, ALABAMA!”

There was an old woman ahead of me. She wore teased white hair, pearls, and an Alabama jersey. She turned to me and whispered, “Do you mind watching my cart while I go beat that man’s ass?”

So I

bought supplies for the evening. Namely, beer, chips, boiled shrimp, and chicken wings.

The older man behind the cash register wore a University of Alabama lapel pin on his apron. And, in rural accent, he said, “Nervous about the game?”

“If I was any more nervous,” I said. “I’d have to call the incontinence hotline for support.”

“Me too,” he went on. “Just don’t forget, there’re three kings in this world. The Good Lord, Elvis, and Nicholas Lou Saban Jr.”

He scanned my groceries.

And that’s when it dawned on me. This poor man was stuck at work during the big game. I asked him about it.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a bummer, but nobody would work tonight. I wish I were at home, having a beer with my son, we are huge fans. But since he’s been gone,…

Birmingham, Alabama—the 1970’s. The hairstyles are ridiculous. Fashions are even worse. It’s Christmastime in the Magic City.

Early evening. A young couple arrives in town to visit family. They are working-class poor. He is overworked and underpaid. She is too.

Still, things are looking up. Even though it’s hard making make ends meet, they have each other.

It hasn’t been a great day. But it’s going to be. They just coasted into a Magic City on magic gasoline fumes. They have enough magic cash for the return-trip home, but that’s about all the magic they have left.

They wander into Bruno’s supermarket. They are shopping on a shoestring budget.

The music overhead is Bing Crosby. “Silver Bells” is the tune.

She pushes a cart. He follows. They are only buying necessities. No fancy stuff.

He listens to the music on the intercom. He lets his mind wander while Bing sings:

“Strings of street lights,
“Even stop lights,
“Blinkin’ red and bright green,
“As the shoppers rush home with their treasures...”

He sees something that interrupts his daydream. It’s a five-dollar bill, lying

in the aisle. Crumpled. Nobody is around. He looks both ways.

He bends to pick it up. This is the ‘70’s, five bucks can do a lot. It can buy six gallons of gas, or canned goods for a few suppers.

“Honey look!” he says.

And just like that, a bad day has become a good day. He unfolds the bill. He looks at Abe Lincoln’s stoic face. Even old Abe seems happy about this particular holiday blessing.

“Wow,” she says. “Aren’t you lucky?”

Luck isn’t the word. It’s a blessing from On High. Magic, even. It’s a sign that things are going to get better. That’s what it is.

But it’s short lived. Something’s wrong. There’s a pang in his stomach. He can’t keep this five dollars. He doesn’t know why.…

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. It’s chilly. The department store parking lot is filled with cars.

A woman rings a bell, standing beside a green bucket. She’s raising money for kids with cancer. She wears a Santa hat and sings “Joy to the World.”

I put a few bucks in the bucket. It’s not much, but every bit counts. Ringing a bell for donations is rough work.

Once, I rang a bell outside a supermarket. I was a pathetic, skinny, nineteen-year-old Southern Baptist wearing a stocking hat.

I stood beside a bucket from morning until late afternoon. Hardly anyone noticed me. A few smiled, some tossed in pennies, but most pretended I didn’t exist.

My first day ringing the bell, I raised seven dollars for a program at our church that bought gifts for children in the cancer ward. Seven lousy bucks.

That night, Brother James, looked at my stack of quarters and said, “Don’t feel too bad about it, son, lotta people are busy.

They ain’t bad people, just busy.”

But I did feel bad about it. I had met some of the pediatric cancer patients. They were normal, happy, fun-loving kids with hairless heads and big hearts. For some of them, it would be their last Christmas. I wanted to know that these children would get a few gifts from a fat man in a red suit.

I decided not to give up. One night, I went to my uncle for advice.

He listened to my problem without responding. And after I vented my frustration, he smiled, patted my shoulder, and said, “Reach into my cooler and get me another beer.”

He popped the tab. “I think the key here, Sean, is to reee-lax. You’ve done all you can do, that’s all that counts. You want a beer?”

“But,” I explained to my uncle. “I’m only nineteen…

Point Clear, Alabama—Christmas here is merry and bright. I am in the lobby of the Grand Hotel, writing you. The place is decorated to the nines. Pinery everywhere. Red ribbons. Twinkly lights.

I have always wanted to stay at this elegant place, but I have never been able to get past security. I am here to speak for an Alfa Insurance conference to seventy insurance professionals.

This is the swankiest hotel I’ve ever been in. My room has a wine refrigerator, starched sheets, and complimentary cucumber mint shampoo. The bath towels and bathrobes are so thick you can hardly get your suitcase closed.

There is an older man sitting on a bench across from me. He is sipping coffee and reading the morning newspaper. I notice him. He is well dressed, and slender. He looks familiar.

Finally, the man lowers his paper and glares at me.

He says, “Do I know you from somewhere?”

“That’s funny,” I say. “I was wondering the same about you.”

The next thing I

know, he’s sitting beside me. He says, “Wait a minute, are you Sean of the South?”

“That depends. Are you with the IRS?”

“Hey! You used to date my daughter a long time ago!”

Somebody please knock me unconscious with a cold chisel.

Suddenly, I remember him.

His daughter and I never actually “dated,” per se, but we went out once or twice. It was not a love connection. But what I remember most was a terse disagreement we had.

It’s a long story, but his daughter believed wholeheartedly that I ran over her mother’s marigolds with my truck.

I was offended. No matter how many times I swore that I didn’t destroy the aforementioned flowerbed, she refused to believe me. Then, she told me in no uncertain words that I was a “loser.” This hurt me. So, I said a few ugly…

I love this time of year. Holidays, food, and college football. The Iron Bowl is upon us. I’m going to a friend’s place for the game. I will be the only University of Alabama fan amidst twenty-nine Auburn University sympathizers in “War Eagle” T-shirts.

I have time to kill. I stop at a small bookstore. The kind with narrow aisles, and off-the-wall books.

I am a book guy. I am crazy about bookstores. I even like the way they smell. I have always wanted to be a maker of books. It was my earliest ambition until I discovered cheese. Then I wanted to dedicate my life to cheese.

When I was a boy, I read the newspaper with my father. He would point to the text and teach me to pronounce the words of columnists.

“What’s a columnist?” I once asked.

“Someone who writes for a paper,” he said.

“What about?”

“Oh, everything and nothing.”

Everything and nothing. Some phrases you don’t forget. This is

one such phrase.

The Christmas before he died, my father gave me a gift. It was a hardback book of American newspapermen like Mark Twain, O. Henry, Ambrose Bierce, and Will Rogers. When I asked him what it was about, he said, “Stories about everything and nothing.”

They were glorified columns, and I read the book so often the pages went limp.

A few years after his passing, I wrote my first attempt at a column. I was a teenager. It was ridiculous copy, written longhand on yellow legal paper. It was about nothing, really. It was meant to be a humorous commentary about Thanksgiving spent with unstable family members.

I sent it to a small newspaper via snail mail. Every morning thereafter, I ran to the end of the driveway to be the first to search the pages. The paper actually ran it.

There…