It was Christmas Eve. I was at the office late, putting out the Christmas Day edition at the newspaper where I worked. Everyone else had gone, save one or two other souls who were printing the paper.

A woman appeared at the door, desperate. She had just driven back into town after spending the past week with her husband, who was out of work and was hospitalized in another city. She had spent her last dollar on gasoline to get home.

She had hoped to get back in time to pick up some toys for her two children from the Salvation Army or from the Christmas fund which our newspaper sponsored.

But here it was, late on Christmas Eve, and she had no toys, and no money.

Was there anything we could do?

Earlier in the week, our newspaper office had been overflowing with toys and food. We had sacks of fruit, canned goods and turkeys lined up in all the hallways and empty offices. By Christmas Eve, though, it was all gone. The food and toys had been distributed.

I could offer her little hope. She was too late. Even if she had come by just a few hours earlier, we might have had something. At the very least, we would have taken up a collection among ourselves.

But, I said, why don’t we look around anyway.

We went into the big room where we had assembled the packages of food and toys. The room was a mess of empty boxes, wrappers and torn sacks. No one was going to clean it up on Christmas Eve.

Over in the corner we found a box of old, broken toys – too damaged to be given as Christmas presents. Surely she didn’t want those.

As we rummaged through the rubbish, however, we found a doll that with a little care could be as good as new.

And there was a ball no one had taken.

And how about this truck – it’s not too bad.

Oh, she said, these will do just fine. I told her to take whatever she wanted. She picked out a few other toys which could be salvaged.

In another corner of the room we found a case of apples and a crate of oranges which had somehow been overlooked.

By the time we were finished, we had loaded down the back of her old station wagon. It wasn’t much, just some fruit and a few beat-up old toys.

But if you measure gifts by the size of the heart rather than the size of the purchase, I’ll bet no one in town got more from Christmas that year than that woman’s two children.

No one, that is, but me.

From Glenn Dromgoole’s new book, The Christmas Spirit: A Celebration in Word and Song, available at Texas Star Trading Company in downtown Abilene.