A little girl was in love with fairy tales. Her parents decided to leave her in her grandma's house and were visiting her from time to time. She was so happy there, playing alone with kittens and puppies, climbing the trees where she could pick cherries, carefully watching snowdrops raising their heads in early spring. In the beginning she believed she was a kind of fairy playing with beautiful, billowing clouds in the sky, making them change direction with her own will.
Gradually she began to understand the world around her. Her relatives, apart from her parents, were so nice towards her. They took care of her, gave her presents and good advices, told her beautiful stories making her believe that truth is above lies, good above evil and love above hate. Above all she always loved Christmas days, when all her loved ones were gathering around the Christmas tree, caroling and smiling and exchanging presents.
Then years flew down the river of her dreams and one day she was no more a child. Her parents took her in their new house with new furniture and new neighbors. She knew it will be hard but she didn't expect so much. Her only weapons against her parents were her patience and her calm. They were beating and scolding her every day without any guilt. She began to write among tears her journal.
Then years passed again down the stream of her life and one day she changed, she felt that her parents’ abuses were no longer touching her heart. Still in a cage, she believed that good really overcame evil and she was not crying like before when they were mistreating her. She was now a young lady, but her parents had a strong hold over her. She was longing for the old Christmas days when everything was so beautiful...
One Christmas day her father got drunk like he used to so many times and toppled down the Christmas tree. She was not angry, now she was always calm, her heart forged by all past experiences. She was sad but she continued to smile and hope for better days.
Another Christmas day her parents didn't buy the tree. She was begging in vain, her father said that there isn't any fir tree in the market. This time she wanted to repair this situation, because that tree was the only moment of real joy for her the whole year round. And she got outside the house with her little money and wandered in different places and she could not find trees for sale. The streets were covered in a blanket of snow, it was snowing heavily. And then, near a block of apartments she looked up for a while, remembering stories from ancient days. All of a sudden a fir branch fell near her in the snow. She looked up again and there wasn't any person in a balcony. No one was looking below. She waited and started to believe that that fir branch was a kind of gift sent from heaven to her, and she believed that heaven means the GOOD - people, places, deeds, whatever else...She took that branch and went home so happy, happy to have her own Christmas, engraved in her memory, where candles lit in childhood were still burning.
Years passed, that young girl grew old, losing her relatives and her parents, still buying her Christmas trees every year. Only when she was finally totally alone she asked herself: was I a thief that day when I believed God sent me his present?