Column: My gift to you if finding your Christmas spirit

I want to be transported to a town from a Hallmark Christmas movie.

And I want to take my family and friends with me. I don’t care if we wind up in a snow globe, on a Christmas tree farm or at a fixer-upper inn. Wherever it is, it’s sure to be oozing with Christmas spirit.

This is my first Christmas without my dad and for the first time ever, I’m coming up short on Christmas spirit.

I can’t find it on the Internet, in the Black Friday ads or on a late night infomercial. It seems it can’t be bought. Yet, my parent’s downstairs, laundry room says otherwise. It’s packed and stacked with boxes, full of Christmas things.

“Can you reach that box on the top shelf?” I ask my husband. Because not only am I short on Christmas spirit, I’m just short.

He lifts it off the shelf, places it on the floor and opens it. Inside is a jumble of Christmas houses, upside down and right side up.

“That was my favorite.” I inform my husband, gently tugging at a plastic hotel with painted, window boxes.

I envision my dad, under the tree, piecing together the Lionel train tracks. I hear the train rolling over the tracks, weaving its way through the village of houses.

I smell the traditional, Giant Eagle holiday ham that my dad cooked and carved every year. And I think of the special holiday cheese. The one that he sampled and tossed in the shopping cart, thinking it was $5.99 for a 3-pound chunk.

But when my mom checked out, it wasn’t $5.99 for the chunk. It was $5.99 a pound.

She never revealed the true price of his cheese until a few days later when he suggested, “Let’s go buy more of that cheese.”

Then he got a lecture. And it began like this, “Howard. Let me tell you about that cheese.”

I found myself giggling, remembering all the Christmas fun my dad made possible. Then, it hit me. I found the Christmas spirit I was short on. It was my dad’s. And it was tucked away in a, 20” x 12” x 9” Reggano Wide Egg Noodle box, on the top shelf in the downstairs, laundry room.

“This could happen in a Hallmark Christmas movie.” I tell my husband. “They find the box and the houses and then… And then...”

And then everyone finds their Christmas spirit, whatever it may be. And that, dear readers, is what I’m wishing for you.

This story was originally published December 11, 2015 at 2:50 PM with the headline "Column: My gift to you if finding your Christmas spirit."