Before the beard.
Before the red suit.
Before Santa's Workshop was filled with snowball fights and whispered wishes…
There was a tree.
Not just any tree.
The tree.
In 2017, my family and I were living in Ringwood, New Jersey. We had a modest little house tucked into a quiet neighborhood, with a small tree, maybe eight or ten feet tall, standing near the front steps. It wasn't much to look at most of the year.
But come December, everything changed.
Every Christmas, I'd string some lights around that tree. Nothing elaborate. Just a few strands of soft, multi-colored bulbs, looped carefully around its limbs.
Sometimes, if we were lucky, it would snow.
And when it did, that little tree transformed. Snow would settle across its branches like powdered sugar. The lights would glow beneath the white, casting a hush across the yard.
It looked like something out of a snow globe, delicate, quiet, timeless. The kind of magic you almost forget to believe in until it's standing right in front of you.
It wasn't the North Pole, but it was something.
It was ours.
And every time I plugged in those lights, it felt like opening a tiny door to something just on the edge of memory, that old Christmas feeling. Wonder, maybe. Joy, definitely.
It was a spark I didn't fully understand at the time, but I felt it. Quietly. Steadily.
That little tree did its job.
But over time, something started to stir... a sense that there was more waiting out there.
Something bigger.
When the time came to move, we were looking for something closer to New York City. I'd been commuting into the city for years, and the long drive from Ringwood, especially in winter, was starting to wear me down.
We wanted a sound school system. A strong sense of community. And yes, something within our price range. Which, if you've ever house hunted in North Jersey, you know is a quest worthy of its own Christmas miracle.
My wife kept mentioning Packanack Lake in Wayne. She'd heard great things, a lake community with heart. A place where people still talked to their neighbors. Kids rode bikes. That kind of thing.
We kept an eye on listings, but nothing came up.
Then one day, my wife said a house was about to go on the market in Packanack. Nothing listed yet, just a heads-up from the realtor.
So we did what any curious couple would do: we loaded the kids into the car and did a slow, hopeful drive-by.
She was talking as we pulled off the highway and into the neighborhood, describing the house, its charm, its location.
But I wasn't listening.
Because there, near the street, was this tree.
A towering Norway Spruce. Easily fifty feet tall if it were an inch. Broad. Full. Slightly wild, like it hadn't been trimmed in years because trimming it would've been an insult.
It stood there like it had been waiting.
Not showy. Not ornamental. Just... certain.
The kind of tree that had earned its right to stay.
And before I could stop myself, I said:
"That tree needs Christmas lights."
My wife gave me a look.
"So that's how we're choosing now?"
"Maybe." I answered with a smirk.
She laughed. The kind of laugh you give when you know you're not winning the argument and you're not really trying to.
"If we're picking by trees, this one wins."
A few days later, we came back to tour the house with our realtor.
And that's when the chaos started.
As we turned into the neighborhood, my daughter, who hadn't eaten breakfast and had been bouncing around in the back seat with uncontainable energy, suddenly went quiet.
A shade of green spread across her face like a slow-moving storm.
We were just about to pull onto the street when she threw up. All over herself. All over the seat.
We froze.
My wife and I locked eyes. That silent, telepathic, "do we abort?" kind of look.
But we were already there. The realtor was waiting in the driveway with a clipboard and a bright smile.
We did a frantic search of the car. Fast food napkins in the glove box, a half-used baby wipe pack under the seat, a discarded water bottle with exactly one gulp left.
Her shirt was a loss. The pants, too. We had no change of clothes.
And then, miracle of miracles, we remembered: the beach towel in the trunk.
So that's how it happened:
Our little girl, wrapped in a beach towel and wearing only her underwear, strolled confidently through the entire home tour like royalty. Head high. Zero shame.
The realtor didn't flinch.
"She looks comfortable," she said, opening the front door.
"Let's take a look around."
So we did.
Trailing behind our towel-clad child like this was the most natural thing in the world.
The house was... fine.
Hardwood floors that needed refinishing. A kitchen that hadn't been updated since maybe 1987. The usual mix of "great potential" and "deferred maintenance."
My wife and the realtor chatted about water heaters, property taxes, and something about school districts.
But I kept drifting.
Because you could see the tree from the front windows. Not perfectly framed, not like a Hallmark movie moment, but present. Visible. Watching.
Every few minutes, I'd find myself in a different room just trying to catch another glimpse through a different window, like it was peeking back in.
Eventually, I slipped out the back door and into the yard.
It was bigger than I expected. Uneven. A little overgrown. But quiet in the best kind of way.
The kids were running barefoot through leaves. My son chasing my daughter, towel trailing behind her like a cape.
I stood in the center of the yard, then lowered myself to the ground.
Cold earth. Bare branches overhead.
And then I looked up... and there it was.
Just the top of the tree, visible over the roofline, stretching tall into the sky. Like it had been standing guard over the house for generations.
I sat there, cross-legged in the grass, the voices of my children echoing around me.
And I thought, not casually, not jokingly, with absolute certainty:
"If we don't buy this house, we're fools."
Not because of square footage. Not because of the lake. Not because of the market.
Because of something else.
It was about a pull... something quiet and confident.
We signed the papers a few weeks later.
Even then, it felt surreal. Like someone was going to pop out from behind a curtain and tell us we didn't belong here.
But no one did.
And the first day we had the keys, just us, not moving in yet, just being in the space, it felt right.
We wandered through the rooms. The kids darted from room to room, laughing, calling dibs.
"This one's mine!"
"Can we sleep here tonight?"
"You get the scary basement!"
We opened every window. Let the air in. Let the house breathe.
Eventually, we ended up near the front of the house. I stepped to the window, the one where I could just barely see the tree.
It looked bigger now. Or maybe just closer.
That night, we stayed longer than planned. No furniture. No boxes. Just light coming through the windows, and a breeze moving through the trees.
The sky turned navy. The kind of blue that swallows you up.
And the Norway Spruce stood dark against it, unmoving.
But alive.
Like it had seen families come and go. Like it had been holding its breath for years.
And now, finally, it could breathe.
I didn't know it yet. Not really.
But that was the moment Kringle Spirit started to stir.
Not with music. Not with sleigh bells.
Just a tree.
The lights would come. The suit would come. The stories, the sleigh bells, the families, the magic… all of it.
But before any of that, there was this tree.
Watching.
Waiting.
Whispering:
"Are you ready to believe again?"
Coming Next Week on Kringle Spirit
Next Thursday, I'll take you back to that first December, when the nights felt full of promise, the tree stood quietly in the dark… and I couldn't stop thinking:
I need to light that tree... not just for me...
For the tired dreamers on their way home,
For the children whispering wishes to the night,
For the grown-ups who forgot what wonder feels like.
A single tree…
A spark of joy…
A soft, glowing reminder that magic hasn't gone anywhere –
You just have to know where to look.
🎁 Don’t miss the next spark of magic.
Subscribe now to stay on the sleigh, and follow the story of how Kringle Spirit came to life, one memory at a time.