I look for “Christmas Shoes” and this is what I get. Oh well.
Well, my happy one-week break away from home and school and everything is ended, along with Christmas which I guess doesn’t affect me as much as it does some since I don’t actually celebrate it but regardless, it’s over, and I’m relieved.
As I’ve mentioned briefly in the past, I work at a small thrift store, and, as I’ve also mentioned, am often pelted with sub-par music at the hands of our variety-free local Christian radio station, but this last month has been kind of nice since the station has been playing Christmas music exclusively and I love Christmas music. Sure, the station managed to keep the long arm of variety out of its playlists as it played the same four songs over and over as reinterpreted by seven different artists, but dangit I like Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith, and I almost never get to hear them except at Christmas.
So it was good, right? And surely not even a nit-picky little Grinch like me could have the heartless nerve to break down a Christmas song, right? I liked the music, and I’m sad now that it’s gone back to regularly scheduled programing.
But one song of the holiday I definitely will not miss, ever, even if I never heard it again, is Christmas Shoes.
The premise? A man goes to the store and there’s a kid in front of him in the check-out line and he’s a totally normal boy.
Except wait! He’s poor looking.
And then he tries to buy these shoes and tells the cashier for some reason that they’re for his mom, because she’s sick, and she’s probably going to die soon, and the shoes will make her happy and also pretty for when she meets Jesus.
But oh noes! Kid has not enough money!
So the kid looks at the singer of the song and repeats the same exact story to him. And the man pays for the shoes. And the kid leaves. And the guy had some kind of Christmas epiphany or something
Two separate stories mesh - in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of a heart condition and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second, lawyer Robert Layton and his wife Kate are slowly drifting apart and the matter comes to a head during Christmas when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir and declines a job in Robert's firm. When Robert's mother passes away, he begins to reconsider things and his and Nathan's paths cross on Christmas Eve as Nathan tries to raise the money for the shoes and Robert tries to get a present for his daughter.
