One year for Christmas, I received few greeting cards. On a nasty February afternoon, a thought flashed out of the recesses of memory that are the source of unnecessary information. I probably needed some reason to justify my low mood, and here it was. But I didn't say anything to anyone about it. I can take it. I am a tough man. I won't complain when my bad friends can't even bother to send me a silly card for Christmas. I can do without their kindness. End of this ridiculous thinking, period.

In August of that same year, I tried to tidy up the attic and among the decorations for the Christmas tree I found a whole box of unopened envelopes containing last year's Christmas cards. I threw them in that box myself to read at my leisure, and then I fell into a whirlwind of traditional Christmas activities, and so they ended up in a pile of stuff in the attic that we were going to sort out sometime next year.

I lowered the box downstairs and imagine, on a hot August day, in swimming trunks, in black glasses, I sat on the terrace in a tourist chair, with a glass of iced tea at hand, and in amazement began to open the envelopes of these Christmas cards. To make it better for me, I played a christmas carol tape on a portable tape recorder.

Everything was as it should be: angels, snow, the Three Kings, candles and spruce branches, horses and sledges, the Holy Family and Saint Nicholas. And if that wasn't enough, the handwritten expressions of my so-called bad friends who sent them just for Christmas printed beautiful wishes of love, joy, peace inside each card.

I cried out. Rarely have I felt so bad and so good at the same time. So wonderfully mean, elegantly sad, melancholic and nostalgic, and all. Mood swings.

As it usually happens, at that moment my neighbor who heard those christmas carols, was laughing. I showed her the cards. She started to cry. And we both lived these extraordinary Christmas experiences together, sitting on the terrace in our tourist armchairs on one August day and singing along with the Mormon choir until the last note: "Holy Night, Silent Night ... "

What more can I say? I think that reverent respect, wonder and joy hide somewhere in the attic of every human mind, and it doesn't take much effort to discover them. And Christmas often surprises us whether it comes to us in December or at the end of August.

- Robert Fulghum