Secret Santa Saves the Day

A stranger keeps the Christmas spirit alive for a little girl

- BY Caroline Fanning

HOT DIGGETY DOG!

The holidays can get you down, and that's how Lexie Gregory of Elberta, Alabama, felt last December. She was at a park one morning, trying to ease her Christmas blues, when a dog walked over and started licking her face. "It was just the sweetest thing," she told WKRG News 5. Gregory never saw the dog's owner but assumed he had one. It was only later that day, after posting online about the dog, that she learned he had recently arrived at a local shelter and still needed a home. So Gregory adopted him. "I don't know how to explain it," she says, "but I was just kind of like, 'That's my dog. He's definitely the Christmas present I didn't know I needed."

It was 1 a.m. on Christmas morning, but for Marisa Shumaker, it was still Christmas Eve. Like so many other parents, she had holiday magic to make.

For weeks, her 4-year-old daughter, Aubree, had been asking for one thing only for Christmas: a “real piano keyboard,” not just some dinky one made for little kids. Now that Aubree was asleep, Shumaker pulled the box from its hiding spot in their home in Bel Air, Maryland, ready to unveil the 61-key keyboard with full-size keys—perfect for (serious) beginners like Aubree. Shu-Maker figured she’d assemble the stand and bench, and set it all up so it would be ready to play when Aubree woke up and discovered her surprise. But when she opened the box, only the stand and bench were inside. No keyboard.

Panic overtook her as she realized what she hadn't noticed before: The keyboard was sold separately.

The night before, mother and daughter had watched the movie The Santa Clause. At one point, two of the main characters talk about the gifts they desperately wanted when they were kids but never received, which made them doubt the existence of Santa.