CHICAGO — It was the second week of December, and Amanda Ullah was counting the minutes to payday so she and her roommate could purchase a Christmas tree for their little apartment, perched above a bar on Chicago’s North Side.
Ullah was 22 at the time, and her younger sister, one of Ullah’s six siblings, had recently moved in with her from Florida.
“My parents were not great,” Ullah said. “But Christmas was the one time of year they would get their act together. I felt like if they can do it, I can figure it out.”
She and her siblings grew up in deep poverty, Ullah said, and her mom struggled with addiction. Her sister joined her in search of stability and safety. Why not also provide some Christmas joy, Ullah thought.
Then she lost her job.
She was working as the general manager at a frozen yogurt shop inside Chicago’s Ogilvie Transportation Center, the last one in a chain whose other locations had all shuttered. Two weeks before Christmas, her store’s fate was sealed.
Ullah was crushed. And then she was motivated. “I thought, ‘I’ll write a poem that tells the story of what happened and maybe someone on the internet will read it and feel sorry for me.’”
“Twas mere weeks before Christmas,
when the girls were at work,
until they were visited by a court clerk...
He said it is with sorrow I must say,
Your store should not be open on this day.“
She went on.
“In bankruptcy court it was declared,
this store too must close — no expense should be spared.
The girls gasped and later they cried,
without work they felt like part of them died.“
She went on some more.
“With all their decorations up,
from previous years,
they tried to remain cheerful,
tried to smile through tears.
“Now the only thing missing,
is their Christmas tree,
it would be a cherry on top,
of all their blessings.”
She added some finishing touches and posted it on Craigslist under the free stuff section.
A suburban man contacted Ullah to say he and his family were getting rid of their old artificial tree and she was welcome to come take it. But Ullah didn’t have a car, so she politely (heartbrokenly) declined.
“He was like, ‘I think I might have something in the city later this week,’” Ullah recalled. “‘Let me just drive it in to you.’”
And he did.
“He brought it wrapped in garbage bags,” she said. “It was the most beautiful, very full, round, happy, fake tree.”
That was 2010.
In the 12 years since: Ullah reenrolled in college, after dropping out to raise her sister, and finished her bachelor’s degree. Her sister moved to New York. Ullah took a job at Whole Foods, met a cute guy named Farid and married him. She was diagnosed with Stage 1 ovarian cancer. She quit her job at Whole Foods to drive a Lyft. She and her husband had a baby girl and named her Charlie. She enrolled in graduate school. She’s studying to become a high school history teacher.
And through it all, every single year, she has assembled, decorated and drawn joy, hope and faith in humanity from that donated tree. She got engaged next to it. Her daughter, now 4, opens gifts next to it.
“It will never leave us,” Ullah said.
There’s a lot I love about this story, including how Ullah asked “missing” to rhyme with “blessings.” But my favorite part is that the man who answered that Craigslist ad didn’t talk himself out of doing the generous thing. If doubt or logistics or traffic factored into his equation, he didn’t let them outweigh his chance to brighten a stranger’s holiday.
“I grew up eating in soup kitchens at the holidays, and that’s one form of charity that’s really beautiful and really important,” Ullah said. “But it’s also really beautiful and important when someone asks for a specific thing and you don’t judge them or say, ‘You don’t really need a Christmas tree.’”
It felt to Ullah like a reflection — and reinforcement — of how she tries to go through the world.
“Part of growing up the way we did is I try not to look at anyone and make an assumption about them,” she said. “I think it’s really beautiful that this person looked at this and didn’t make assumptions about why a 22-year-old couldn’t afford a Christmas tree. They just took the leap. And it’s honestly probably part of why I am the way I am today.”
She didn’t keep the tree donor’s information. Part of her wishes she had.
“He'd be on my holiday card list,” she said. “I'd tell him, ‘You bring me joy at the holidays every year, sir.’”
Now that I know this lovely little story? Me too, sir. Me too.
