Make You Mine This Season

Prologue

The video started with the creator's quick intro - upbeat pop music accompanying images of a cherubic young woman's smiling face, then a few quick cuts of highlights from her previous posts, ending with a brief overlay of the title: Em's Musical Life.

When the intro was over, the music switched to a holiday song (Tegan and Sara's Make You Mine This Season) as dusky footage of a quiet street shot from an upstairs window played. The shot was of a shabby brick house across the street. An old Subaru was parked in the driveway like a sentinel to an otherwise abandoned looking house.

As the video played, a figure walked into view, coming down the sidewalk in front of the shabby house. The figure was carrying a nondescript backpack and was wrapped up in a dark, quilted parka. As the figure got closer to the house, words started appearing at the bottom of the video:

For 3 years, things have been appearing on all the mailboxes on my street on Christmas morning. The 1st year: homemade wreaths with 12 things attached (candy bars, gift cards, handmade ornaments, etc.) There are 12 houses on my street, and every single one had a big wreath hanging on their mailbox that Christmas morning. None of us had any clue who they'd come from. None of my neighbors took credit for the gifts.

As these words appeared, the backpacked figure in the video had quietly made their way to the house and crouched down in the yard, beginning to slowly unload large bundles from the backpack.

The next year, instead of wreaths, gift bags were hanging from the mailbox posts. Inside each bag... 12 items. Our house got a small tin of cookies from the bakery downtown, a few gift cards from local businesses, handmade ornaments again, and a game. I think each house got different, personalized gifts in their bag. My neighbor, who lives in the house across the street, is a widow and lives alone except for her cat. She got the tin of cookies, some homemade ornaments, and some gift cards. She also got a tin of cat treats. Again, we had no idea who was behind it.

As these words appeared on the screen, the figure in the video finished unpacking their backpack, went to the back of the drab house, and returned with a metal ladder they then set up against the house.

Last year, instead of wreaths or gift bags, big red and green gift-wrapped boxes waited for us under our mailboxes Christmas morning. Ours had a tin of popcorn, the now-standard homemade ornaments and gift cards, but also a bag of homemade treats for my new puppy, Ox.

The figure in the video was now on the ladder and very carefully hanging a string of lights along the eaves of the shabby house.

Last year was also the first year our Mystery Elf hung lights on my neighbor's house, who spent most of last November in the hospital. Her cat came to spend the holidays with us (you all remember the videos I shared of Ox and Leon's adventures!)

A few still images of a very scruffy orange cat and very wide-eyed boxer mix puppy, involved in various antics, popped up on the screen, then quickly disappeared.

My neighbor came home Christmas Eve. When we brought Leon back, we saw someone had hung lights on the house. This had to mean whoever had done it had known about the hospital stay.

The figure, back on the screen again, was slowly making their way around the house, gathering new bundles of lights as needed.

So, our Christmas Elf was also the light-hanger because that Christmas morning we all had wreaths on our mailboxes again. And my neighbor's wreath, she later told me, had also included forty dollars cash and a typed note that stated it was to help pay for the extra electricity her lights would be using. It also explained that the person would be sure to take the lights down after the first of the year so my neighbor shouldn't worry about that.

The figure was now very stealthily hanging lights around the posts on the shabby house's front porch. The sun was nearly down by then, the figure in almost total shadow.

I did some digging. My neighbor adopted Leon four years ago from a woman who lives around the corner from my street. She found Leon in her dumpster. Hoping he belonged to someone, she put up posters in our neighborhood. My neighbor took one look at that orange whiskered face on the posters and told the woman if no one claimed him, she'd take him in.

The figure had completed wrapping the porch posts with lights and was now carefully going around the house, inspecting each string and ensuring they were hung well.

If I'm right, sometime between now and tomorrow morning my neighbor's light-hanger will be going around to each of our mailboxes leaving gifts.

The figure, satisfied with their work, returned the metal ladder behind the house, and then plugged in the lights.

The video brightened as did the shabby house, now as full of life as the puppy Ox had been in the brief images that had appeared earlier in the video.

I'm determined... I'm going to get to the bottom of our Mystery Elf this year!

The last words appeared across the screen as the figure picked up their now-empty backpack and slowly made their way back down the sidewalk the way they'd come.

Wish me luck!