Editor’s Note: This column was originally published on Dec. 24, 1995.

Sometimes Christmas comes when you least expect it.

It came to me in a candy store in Weiser, where I was working on a holiday feature story. Until then, my Christmas spirit had been non-existent.

For most of December, I’d been grumping about Christmas crowds, Christmas traffic, the Christmas credit-card balance. The frenzied pace of life in the microchip society, which appears to have replaced “Peace on Earth” with “Shop till you drop,” is conducive to grumping. A time meant to be joyful becomes infuriating, something to be endured.

But not at that candy store in Weiser.

There, everyone looked happy. Employees joked with each other. They joked with the boss. It wasn’t strained or artificial, either. Somehow, those people had found happiness in the simple act of being together.

As workers poured steaming fudge onto a marble slab to cool, an unexpected thing happened. Nothing transports us through time as quickly or powerfully as forgotten fragrances. Borne by the aroma of boiling fudge, I was instantly back in character as a kid in my mother’s kitchen. It was a Christmas Eve in the 1950s, and it was perfect.

I’m not sure why that particular Christmas Eve stands out in memory. Nothing dramatic or even unusual happened, unless you count the snow.

White Christmases aren’t exactly common in this part of Idaho, but that year the snow came by the ton. It started just after dark and didn’t stop until the next morning. One of my most vivid Christmas memories is peering out a window that night at the steadily falling snow, illuminated in the glow of the old-fashioned streetlight.

Streetlights looked like big lanterns in those days. Ours was suspended from a wire stretched between telephone poles at the intersection by my parents’ home. In its yellow light, the flakes looked as big as silver dollars. Erasing lines, softening edges, the snow transformed the familiar neighborhood into something almost magical.

In the kitchen, my mother stirred a pot of Christmas fudge while Dad fussed over the proportions for his Tom and Jerries.

In the living room, my sister listened for the hundredth time to Hugo Winterhaler’s “Christmas Joy,” patently the best Christmas album ever recorded. The room was gently lit by candles, a fire in the fireplace and the lights on the tree. Outside was a blizzard, but inside it was warm and cozy. It even smelled like Christmas. I cannot recall feeling more content.

There weren’t a lot of fancy presents under the tree that year. My father and uncle were struggling with a new business and had to watch every dollar. My mother and sister worked, but no one in the family had money to throw around. Dad did his best, but I remember his warning more than once that it would be a lean Christmas. No problem.

It didn’t matter. It wasn’t the gifts or the perfectly timed snowstorm or even the heavenly aroma of my mother’s cooking that made that Christmas special. It was something more basic, something that today we tend to lose sight of in the crowds and the traffic and the stampedes at the mall.

Like the workers at the candy store, we had found happiness in the simple act of being together, of sharing the beauty of the night and the season with those we loved.

My wish for you and yours is the same.

Merry Christmas.