Meet the Real-Life Grinch Who Stole This Family’s Christmas

Just Another Christmas

James Williams was living the American dream, or as close to it as you can get. He served in the Marines, returned home in one piece, started a family, and rounded up the capital to start his own business. Everything was looking good, with even better on the horizon. At least that’s the way it seemed when Christmas came in 2018.

Williams had settled into his new routine by then, having moved off the battlefield and onto the oil field. (His company hauled the heavy machinery the roughnecks used to suck the oil out of the Texas earth.) He’d already closed the books for the year and done his Christmas shopping. Now it was time to relax with the family. To kick the holidays off, Williams took his wife and three kids to ride the Polar Express. Other than that, nothing about the day was out of the ordinary. So nothing could have prepared Williams for what would happen next.

“They Went Through Every Shelf, Every Cabinet, Every Room.”

While the Williams family was out getting into the holiday spirit, burglars broke into their home. This is how it usually happens, by the way. Real-life grinches don’t wait until you’re fast asleep. (That takes more nerve.) They pillage the easy way — during the day, while you’re out.

“They went through every shelf, every cabinet, every room. All of our entertainment centers. They took all of our electronics. Pretty much anything in the house that had a power cord to it, they took,” Williams told CBS7 news.

The theft of his laptop and hard drives was a tough blow. (Williams’ entire business lived there.) Inexplicably, the bandits even snatched up Williams’ son’s pets: a rabbit and a snake.

But there was an element of the burglary that was particularly difficult for Williams to come to terms with. The burglars had knifed open his presents, stashed in closets and drawers. They’d taken what they wanted and dumped anything that didn’t pass muster. It was almost as if they were Christmas shopping, as if Williams’ house was a Walmart and his hard-earned gifts were free giveaways, some of them not even worth stealing.

That’s the feeling that stuck with Williams.

“It was frustration. It was a huge sense of vulnerability of having these people in our house and going through our items. But at the end of the day, I failed to maintain my responsibilities as the head of this household of ensuring the safety of it and my family,” he said.

Déjà Vu

Midland, Texas, has a population of a little over 100,000. It’s not a tiny town, but it does seem to have more than its fair share of grinches per capita. Three years earlier, thieves cleaned Christmas decorations worth $200 off Midland grandfather Alan Roy’s front lawn. (They were caught on camera but managed to get away.)

The same lowlifes struck repeatedly that year, in true Grinch fashion, slinking in under cover of night and hauling off anything that reminded them of Christmas.

It was difficult for men like Alan Roy to sit back and watch. Those decorations were a family tradition and he was angry. “I just want them to come back,” Roy told news crews at the time, “because I have a present for them.”

The strange thing is, after living through a home invasion at the worst time of year, Williams had a different message to send the thieves that had robbed him. He told reporters, “They didn’t take anything from us, the family. They took items out of the house…. They didn’t do a single thing to our Christmas spirit.”

If Williams’ words remind you of the Whos of Whooville — robbed down to their last ornament and still filled with joy — you’re not alone.

Final Thoughts

Williams may have managed to reach deep into his heart and stay joyful and sane after his holiday burglary, but it left him feeling frustrated and vulnerable. That’s normal. The thought of a stranger violating our personal space is gut-churning.

We don’t have any advice for adjusting to life after a burglary, other than calling your home insurance agent immediately, because your home insurance policy covers you for property loss.

But we do have some advice for keeping lowlifes out of your house and off your property. Invest in a home security system the experts recommend. Your options run the gamut from completely DIY home security equipment you can set up yourself in under an hour to iron-clad systems with monitoring plans like ADT.

A home security system isn’t foolproof (desperate thieves will stop at nothing). But when they look up and see a camera staring at them from your front porch, your neighborhood Grinch will certainly think twice about setting foot in your house, and if they do, they likely won’t be sticking around long.