For my family, the holiday season isn’t complete without a reading of Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas In Wales”. Everyone’s favorite ornament on the tree is a wide-mouthed Santa who, when you squeeze his cheeks, offers a chocolate kiss. And each stocking gets a beautiful, large navel orange in the bottom of the toe, just like my Swedish cousins have done for generations.

At Mast Store, we’re proud that many family’s holiday traditions include visiting with us in one of our ten communities. One of our guests at the Greenville Store remarked, “I’ll bet every single stocking in Greenville [South Carolina] has something from Mast Store in it. If a stocking doesn’t include something from Mast, it wouldn’t be Christmas!”

This year, we met folks from all over the globe: Panama, Paraguay, England, Germany, Sweden, Finland, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Australia, and as far away as New Zealand. We were impressed and delighted when a family of 14 – and all the way from Japan - stopped by our store in Greenville.

Folks get creative hiding special purchases from their loved ones while shopping at Mast Store. One guest visiting the Waynesville Store cleverly kept her husband’s gifts a secret with the help of a Mast associate. She handed over her selections to the associate, one armful at a time, where they were hidden and purchased in one department. All of her gift selections were double bagged and clandestinely sent to the back of the store so the wife could stash her husband’s gifts in the car with him none the wiser.

Other guests went to great lengths to keep their special gifts a surprise for family members too. One father visiting the Annex in Valle Crucis hopped over the porch railing to hide a special gift he purchased for his son. And a sweet 8-year-old boy shopped all by himself for his family while his mom waited for him elsewhere in the Boone Store.

Perhaps one of our sweetest memories this holiday season was meeting a gentleman visiting the Greenville Store who is a 30-year survivor of one of the first successful heart transplants. He received the heart of a 16-year-old boy and is still very close to the boy's mother.  What a wonderful gift to remember at Christmas… and all the year through.

Whether you came from across the ocean or across the street, we’re always happy to see you at Mast General Store. Visiting with you each year makes our holiday special, too, and we’re excited to see your faces come through our doors again in 2015.