In listening to a podcast this week, I almost teared up at the story of a Christmas song. It is a secular song, but then, it is not. I will never hear it the same again.

In 1939, Montgomery Ward wanted to publish something Christmassy with an animal protagonist for children of customers. Rather than hire someone outside the company, they asked someone already employed. Someone suggested Robert L. May, an advertising copyrighter. He’d never really written a children’s story, but, hey, he was a writer.

May, however, was having a hard life. His wife dying of cancer, he was raising his young daughter who didn’t understand what was happening to her family. He started to decline his employer’s request, but then thought of his daughter, maybe even felt this would help him through his ordeal.

His wife died before he finished it, and Montgomery Ward offered to relieve him of the task, but May completed it, for his daughter to show that even an underdog, or anyone with a difference, can represent a symbol of hope for all. As a nod to May’s wife’s death, Montgomery Ward gave him the rights to the story.

There’s more to the story, like his brother-in-law creating the song, then 25 years later the cartoon was developed with Burl Ives, but I especially find poignant two things. . . one, that Montgomery Ward was generous enough to give him the rights as thanks and to soothe his pain. Second, that May wrote through his pain for the love of his daughter, and to weather the trauma. He wrote for something bigger than himself.

You know if you are writing for the right reasons. He did it not for money, because he didn’t have the rights, but instead wrote for a higher purpose. That’s what makes writing the best.