Christmas was saved this year by a stranger's act of kindness that helped a mom fulfill her daughter's Christmas miracle.
In a now viral video that Marisa Shumaker, 29, shared on TikTok on Christmas morning, the mom from Bel Air, Maryland, shared a story about how Christmas was saved after part of her daughter's Christmas present wasn't delivered and how a stranger stepped in to make sure Shumaker's daughter, Aubree Reese, 4, had a magical Christmas morning.
"Santa is absolutely real," Shumaker told "Good Morning America." "He may not be a fat jolly man in a red coat, but he lives within all of our hearts and it's just up to us whether or not we decide to let him out."
Grandma loves to keep some Christmas decor up all year@xxxxkaisaxxxx Thank you random facebook guy for saving Christmas for us!!! Youre AMAZING!!! #christmasmiracle #giving #savingchristmas #miracleshappen #iminshock ♬ original sound - Kaisa❤️
Like many parents on Christmas Eve, Shumaker was busy preparing a memorable Christmas morning for her daughter. But when she went to assemble her daughter's present from Santa -- a piano keyboard -- she panicked when the keyboard component was nowhere to be found.
"That is the one and only gift that she wanted from Santa," Shumaker said. "A big piano with a chair."
Shumaker said her "heart dropped" when there was no keyboard and recalled a scene from the "Santa Claus" movie when the characters, Laura and Neil, share the moment from their childhood when they stopped believing in Santa when he forgot to give them the present they wanted.
"I knew that this was going to be that type of pivotal moment for my daughter, so I just started panicking to be quite honest," she said.
Shumaker said that she took to her local Facebook community group at 1:45 a.m. seeking advice on how to "save Christmas."
After getting messages from some who told her to "write it off" and just say that her daughter's present fell off of Santa's sleigh, Andy Spencer, 46, who Shumaker described as "an angel sent from above," messaged her and told her that he might be able to help her out.
Spencer, who was about to go to bed for the evening, said he saw Shumaker's post and realized his daughter had a spare keyboard that she hadn't been using for some time in her room. Spencer said that he showed his daughter the message and was immediately excited to make a young girl's Christmas wish come true. His son was also on board.
"They were both amped up and just ready to go do something cool," Spencer said.
Boy battling cancer in hospital during Christmas gets sweet surpriseSpencer and Shumaker agreed to meet at a local Safeway parking lot in their community. They both said they were "a little bit nervous" to meet so early in the morning after only communicating on Facebook.
But Shumaker said that "desperate times call for desperate measures."
"I was willing to take that risk and do anything to make sure that my little girl was able to have the Christmas that she deserved this year," she added.
When Spencer arrived at the parking lot with his kids around 2 a.m., Shumaker said that her knees began to "buckle" when they brought out the keyboard from their car.
"It looks brand new, doesn't have any dust on it or marks on it or anything," Shumaker said. "All I could do was just thank him profusely, because words could truly not describe the amount of gratitude that I had for him in that moment."
"I just knew in that moment that Christmas was officially saved for my daughter," she added. "And how beautiful is that for an actual Christmas miracle to occur, especially at that time of night."
Shumaker asked if Spencer wanted anything in return and she said that all he asked for was a picture of Shumaker's daughter's reaction on Christmas morning when she saw the keyboard.
"That really touched my heart because not many people are like that to really care about the feelings of a child and their magic on Christmas morning over the money that they could possibly make in that moment," she said. "It was truly heart touching."
"I left the parking lot thinking I may get a picture, I might get to see something," Spencer said. "But I was more than okay with that."
On their car ride back home, Spencer shared how giddy his kids were that they were able to help make Christmas special for a little girl.
"There was a conversation in the car with my kids and my son said something like, 'Oh my God, this is so elite, we're about to give a kid a keyboard and make their Christmas,'" Spencer said. "We kind of joked about it and he's like, 'Well we got to go visit them.' And I'm like, 'No, that's not how this works.' And my daughter goes, 'She thinks we're Santa.'"
"It just closed the loop for me," Spencer added. "It just fulfilled my heart, it wasn't hard to do, it worked out. It wasn't very difficult. It just took a few minutes of time to do something nice."
When Shumaker's daughter woke up on Christmas morning, she said Aubree "got out of bed the fastest I've ever seen her in her little life."
Shumaker said that Aubree raced to see the remnants of the cookies and milk eaten by "Santa" and the carrots that were eaten by "Santa's reindeer" and by the time that she saw the keyboard, "her eyes locked on that piano."
"She did not want to touch another present for about an hour," Shumaker said. "She still has a stocking that's completely untouched that she hasn't even opened yet. She's has been completely enthralled with this piano."
@xxxxkaisaxxxx Personally i think shes going places with this! Shes a natural!😱 #proudmom #christmaspiano #pianoprodigy #naturaltalent #futurecelebrity ♬ original sound - Kaisa❤️
She added, "All I could think was, if my daughter only knew that I met Santa Claus in real life at 2 o'clock in the morning, when Santa is supposed to show up to get this keyboard for you that you specifically asked for from Santa -- I don't even have to lie to my child and say that Santa got her something that I got."
"It's very true, Santa did give her this keyboard," she said.
Shumaker said that she hopes this Christmas story helps others realize the power of kindness.
"Giving whenever you're able to without asking for anything in return is the ultimate gift that you can give somebody," she said. "Being that selfless is just an amazing quality that you don't see very much in today's day and age. And if we're all like that, then our communities would all be such wonderful places."
Spencer echoed Shumaker's message of kindness and said, "It doesn't take a lot, but you can make a huge difference."
"It's just that that level of kindness is going to make a difference," he added. "And one by one, maybe, you know, maybe somebody else does this for someone else in the future or helps out in a way that that makes a difference and spreading some positivity."
