Everyone pine creek said Christmas was for children.
And maybe they where right, but even among children, Eli Carter believe harder than anyone else.
Pine creek was a small, tried town tucked between long Texas highway and fields that never seemed to grow anything right. The house leaned like they were exhausted, paint peeling, roofs signing under the sun. Christmas lights hung every December, but most of them didn't turn on anymore. People people still put them up out of habit, not hope.
Eli lived in a narrow house at the edge of the town with his mother. The heater rattled, the floor creaked, and it refrigerator hummed louder than it is cooled. Still every December, Eli taped paper snowflakes to the windows and drew Christmas trees on scraps of cardboard.
His mother smile when she saw them, though her eyes were always tried.
"Eli", she said gentle on hight as she folded laundry," you know things are..... tight this year.
Eli nodded. Heist always nodding. But inside, he believed something she didn't dare to anymore.
He believed Christmas listened.
At school, the other kids laughed when he talks about Santa.
"Bro, Santa ain't real," Marcus said one afternoon, kicking a rock across the playground. "My dad says Christmas is just money."
Eli didn't argue. He never did.Believe didn't need arguing.it just needed holding onto
That night, as the cold crept into the house and the moon glowed pale over pine creek, Eli sat by the window with a note book. It wasn't fancy just folded paper held together with tape.
At the top, he wrote.
MY CHRISTMAS WISH
He thought about toys. About bikes, games he'd seen in store windows.
Then he crossed them all out.
Slowly, carefully, he wrote something else.
I wish Christmas will come back for everyone. Even the ones who forgot.
He folded the paper, held it to his chest, and whispered, "I still believe." That was when he heard it. A scratching sound, from the roof.