I’ve been sitting on this story for a long time, actually. Clear back in December, I went to a Christmas play with my sister at our local community theater. It’s an annual tradition in our family since as long as I could remember.  The last few years, it’s been me, my sister, and my little brother. But this year, my little brother had just left on a mission for our church and Christmas wasn’t feeling very Christmasy at all. We talked about not going, just waiting for him to get back and picking it back up then. But we didn’t want to waste the tickets and we needed SOMETHING to get us in a better mood. So off we went, a little sad, a little scroogey. The play was great, as it always is, but the real surprise came when we got back to our car. We we about the farthest away from the theater in the gravel, but as we looked around, we started seeing these little velvet bags on the tops of a few of the cars. And, like a little miracle, one on ours, too. I’m always skeptical of those, but there were so many, maybe 20 other cars on our row? My sister is way more daring than I am, so she opens it up and scans the code. I tell her she’s going to get her data stolen, but she’s a believer and it’s Christmas. The note was so sweet, but what made us laugh and then cry was the candy. It was those little Nerd clusters. Not Christmasy at all, but absolutely my brother’s favorite candy. I can’t imagine that whoever was out putting those on cars that night had any idea. But our whole season kicked off with what we started calling the Miracle of the Nerds. I wish we’d taken a picture. But thank you a million times to the stranger who saved our Christmas season.

—Christy L. and Andrea H.