One evening a few years back, The Girlfriend and I went downtown to see the lights at Temple Square.

I should probably explain for my out-of-state readers that Temple Square is the geographic heart of both Salt Lake City and the LDS faith. Practically the first thing the Mormon pioneers did when they arrived in this valley in 1847 was to pick a spot on which to build their temple. The early settlement, then the city that rose from that, and eventually the layout of the entire valley radiated outward from that one place. Today, the original temple grounds, which include the temple itself and several other buildings surrounded by a high stone wall, comprise an entire city block, Temple Square. And every fall, the church begins decorating the grounds — as well as several adjoining properties — with literally millions of Christmas lights. The switch is thrown over Thanksgiving weekend, and the lights stay on every night until New Year’s Eve. It’s an amazingly beautiful spectacle. And best of all, it’s open to the public, regardless of faith, and it’s absolutely free to get in. I doubt if there’s anyone in this valley who hasn’t experienced it at least once, and most everyone I know goes every year.

The particular visit I’m thinking of was on a bitterly cold night just before Christmas Eve. Anne and I were reasonably comfortable in heavy coats and the long underwear we’d bought for our Yellowstone snowmobiling weekend, but our exposed faces still tingled painfully in the frigid air. We were surrounded by hordes of similarly dressed people, all looking like chubby little marshmallow men (and marshmallow women and children) in their layered clothing, all of them buzzing happily about holiday parties, shopping left to do, and the other lighthearted things people talk about this time of year.

Not one of them was paying the slightest attention to the man seated on a mud-encrusted five-gallon bucket in front of the diner on the corner just south of Temple Square.

He was slender, and had one of those faces that’s difficult to date; he could’ve been anywhere between 30 and 60. He had a beard and his hair was a little on the shaggy side, but both looked clean. His clothes were also clean, if threadbare, and terribly inadequate for the weather. Instead of a proper coat, he wore only one of those quilted flannel shirt-jackets favored by construction workers, with a thin wool blanket draped over his shoulders. A scrap of cardboard in his lap bore the usual plea: HOMELESS & HUNGRY, PLEASE HELP.

I encounter panhandlers nearly every day. They tend to congregate on the same block as my most convenient light-rail stop, and I usually get hit up for money at least once during my walks to and from the office. Some days, if I have a few cents in my pocket and I’m in an especially good mood, I’ll give them some change. Mostly, though, I’ve learned to shrug off their advances and cynically wonder if they’re drug addicts, or the con-artists you sometimes hear about who live in perfectly respectable houses out in the ‘burbs and make a good living off the generosity of bleeding-heart saps.

That guy on the corner by Temple Square, though… something about him struck me differently than the miscreants down on Main Street. He seemed somehow more… genuine. I could tell he was genuinely cold, for one thing; his shivering was no act, not on that night. And there was something else, too, an air of wounded pride, and maybe even fear. He gave off a vibe of really not wanting to do what he was doing, and of not being able to see any other option. I found I simply could not ignore him, not in those temperatures and not in that location. It angered me that all those milling tourists seemed to be no more conscious of him than of the nearby fireplug. I’d walked past him myself, on my way to cross the street with the rest of the herd, but I suddenly found myself turning back, right in the middle of the crosswalk.

I walked up to him and said “hi,” in the friendliest voice I could muster.

The man’s eyes lifted slowly to meet my own, as if it took him a moment to realize someone had actually spoken to him. A flash of suspicion crossed his windburned face, and I knew he was expecting me to give him a ration of abuse, or perhaps an unwanted sermon.

Instead, I held out my hand and when he reflexively raised his to shake, as people tend to do when they’re raised in Utah, I pressed a five-dollar bill into his palm. I noted that the skin was cool and tough, the muscle beneath it hard, like a wooden form inside a leather glove. A hand like my father’s, forged by years of working with tools that require more effort to use than a keyboard and mouse.

The man looked at the money and again seemed surprised. He thanked me, and said with apparent sincerity, “Bless you. ” And I blurted out, “For God’s sake, man, go get a cup of coffee or something. Just get out of this cold for a little while.”

Melodramatic words, I know, but they seemed natural at that moment. I thought I saw the man’s eyes grow shiny, and I smiled at him. Then I turned away and trotted across the street to catch up with Anne on the other side. We went into Temple Square and spent a lovely hour or so wandering beneath the glow of the colored lights. And when we returned, the man and his bucket were gone.

Now, I’m not naive. I know that man might have conned me, that my fiver could have paid for a pint of low-grade whiskey, or something much worse. But I prefer to believe he was actually sitting at the counter of that diner on the corner, warming his stiffened fingers around a hot mug, when Anne and I passed that way again.

There’s no moral to this story. I’m not trying to say anything about charity or the plight of the homeless or the irony of people ignoring a fellow human being’s need while only a stone’s throw away from a giant statue of Christ Himself. I just find myself thinking of that guy around this time of the year, thinking in particular of how shocked he seemed simply to have someone acknowledge that he existed, and cared that he was sitting out in the freezing cold. I have no way of knowing what happened to him, of course. But I hope he’s okay, somewhere and somehow…