HOOKSETT – Two anonymous women lifted the holiday spirits of six people in a Kmart customer service line Christmas Eve, quietly handing out $50 bills before leaving the store in giggles.

For Manchester teacher Nicole Paquet of Pembroke, one of the lucky six, a random act of kindness was just the jump-start her holiday spirit needed in the wake of the recent Connecticut school shooting.

"When I asked them 'Why?' they responded, 'Why? Why not, Merry Christmas!'"

It happened about 4 p.m., Paquet said.

“Two blond women, one was in her 30s and the other probably her 40s, came into the store and asked where the lay-away department was, and they went back there,” she said. “Then we saw them afterwards. They started at the back of the customer service line and said 'Here's $50, Merry Christmas' to everyone in line. As they got closer, I realized they weren't saying it to anyone they knew, but handing it out to everyone in the customer service line.

“I was right at the register and they gave one to me and ran out of the store,” Paquet recalled. “They definitely did not want to be acknowledged. It was so nice and quite shocking.

Their kindness changed everyone's mood, Paquet said. “We were all kind of grumpy, standing in line because it was so long and we felt like we were there forever.”

When she got back to the car where her husband and children had waited, Paquet asked if they'd seen the women.

“He saw the women and said they seemed out of the ordinary, how happy they were and how happy they seemed,” Paquet said.

On the way home, the family stopped at the Mega X store in Allenstown where Paquet had the $50 tested with a register pen to confirm it was genuine. But she didn't spend the money, it will go to pay down a credit card or a bill. The gift wasn't just the money anyway, according to the teacher.

“It's nice to know there are people out there that are nice and go out of their way to get people in the holiday spirit,” Paquet said. “As a teacher in Manchester, I was kind of down with the Connecticut shooting and wonder if that would happen at the school I teach at and what's wrong with some people in the world. This was a great way to kick off Christmas Eve.”