I nonetheless keep in mind the enjoyment and anticipation main as much as Christmas once I was younger.
Take into consideration being unable to go to sleep on Christmas Eve, staring on the coloured bulbs of our Christmas lights out my bed room window and questioning when Santa would come.
Or watching Tim Allen’s “The Santa Clause” and being captivated by what Elf Judy mentioned to an incredulous Scott Calvin as he stood within the North Pole, unable to just accept what was earlier than his eyes: “Seeing isn’t believing; believing is seeing.”
That sense of marvel we really feel as youngsters is just too usually one of many unlucky casualties of maturity. We undergo college and have all the things defined to us, from the start of the universe and the way people got here to be by means of a protracted sequence of millionth-millionth probabilities, to how God and faith have been made-up ideas to present our ancestors consolation in a seemingly uncontrollable world of unknowns.
We commerce a world of marvel and thriller for a diploma.
Ten years in the past, I printed “The Story of the Elm Bushes” as a rebuke to this wonderless world modernity has created and watched the story convey tears of hope to individuals throughout the political and ideological spectra—from agnostics to Jews and conservatives to liberals.
This yr, to rejoice my completion of the screenplay for this guide, I’m publishing a Ten-12 months Anniversary version of “The Story of the Elm Bushes.” The aim? To as soon as once more assist readers rediscover the world of marvel that’s so inherent within the Christmas season.
It’s a time once we rejoice a virgin giving start to the Messiah, an occasion heralded and acknowledged by everybody from a choir of angels to some random sensible males from the East who traveled fairly far simply to see this new King.
Learn mine. Ten-year anniversary version drops on 11/20. https://t.co/nNdAJmfvvf
— S. Wyatt Younger (@swyattyoung) November 12, 2025
For a Christian love story, “The Story of the Elm Bushes” isn’t a kind of happy-go-lucky tales that inform the stereotype for Christian novels. The story follows a younger man named Charlie Shaw whose life is marred by a stage of tragedy and loss most of us couldn’t bear.
Charlie makes use of well-developed ways as a “woman’s man” within the small school city of Charlottesville to keep away from the dangers of affection and vulnerability—and the potential ache of loss that love and vulnerability convey.
All that adjustments when Charlie meets a younger girl, Katie Monroe, who skillfully scales the partitions Charlie erected to guard his coronary heart from ache and helps him rediscover a world of marvel he way back misplaced. But when Charlie faces the upcoming lack of his newfound love, he has a selection—he can retreat as soon as once more and rebuild the partitions Katie tore down, or he can lastly lay his coronary heart naked on the ft of the God of Marvel, the one One who can actually redeem Charlie’s ache.
This Christmas, I hope you’ll be a part of me and the numerous others who learn this story ten years in the past and embark on a journey of rediscovering the marvel modernity has made so scarce. This particular Ten-12 months Anniversary version releases on November 20, however you possibly can preorder your copy at the moment on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever books are offered.
And should you’re a part of a small group, Bible examine, or guide membership and you buy a minimum of seven copies to your group, I’ll make a particular digital look to your group to debate the story with you and what it means for our tradition.
This guide just isn’t political, however it is extremely a lot a Christian story—identical to the Christmas story we’ll quickly be celebrating. So wherever you’re at on this journey in life, I hope you’ll be a part of me in rediscovering marvel this Christmas season.
S. Wyatt Younger is a author, lawyer and conservative political commentator. Observe and subscribe to his social media and Substack accounts for extra faith-filled content material.