This Christmas season, you’ve probably seen some pretty grumpy people. Maybe their bonus wasn’t as big as usual, or maybe it didn’t come at all. Maybe their kids want more than they can give. Maybe they’re just victims of the holiday frenzy.

But then there’s Ann Marie Rita, out on the Glen Charlie bridge hanging wreaths to cheer up children who may pass by.

When we caught up with her on Cranberry Highway, she was bringing tea lights to the 20 or so evergreen sprays she had made and hung on the bridge. Walking, of course, from the Dollar Store to Glen Charlie.

You see, Ann Marie is homeless. But she defies the stereotype. She’s intelligent and well spoken. Her hair and clothes are clean, and you can tell that’s important to her. As for being homeless, she isn’t on drugs or alcohol or pregnant, so there’s no program for her, she says.

She’d like to be “in” for Christmas, maybe in a motel, maybe for a week, but there’s no money for it. Outreach workers came by and promised her that, but never came back.

Her backpack is heavy and her face is lined from being “out” nine years. “Out,” as she puts it, means living outdoors.

With all that to deal with, what does she do? Make Christmas evergreen sprays of bittersweet, cat tails, ilex, balsam fir and juniper from the nearby woods and marshes.

“I did it for the children,” she says. “Make sure you write about the children.” She said she heard “the children” were being harassed on the bus, so she started making wreaths for them.

She gestures over her shoulder to the woods on the other side of the overpass, indicating that “the children” she is talking about are homeless, too.

Ann Marie says she’s spent the last decade moving around -- Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine. For the last three years she’s been living in Massachusetts.

She says she was born and raised near Cambridge and went to college for engineering. She says she worked at a technology laboratory as an engineer in 1983.

But then . . . there’s a gap. A big one as wide as the time and distance from Cambridge to the Glen Charlie bridge, a backpack and sleeping outside.

With such a hard life you’d expect bitterness.

Instead, she smiles when she shows off her carefully crafted wreaths. She talks about scavenging the materials by hopping the railing and names some of the greens she’s gathered: purple holly, Scotch pine, rhododendron, broomstick grasses, and Virginia creeper. She made wreaths for the Police Station, a tree for the local convenience store, and decorated one of the firs on the bank of the ramp to the bridge.

Some of the wreaths were designed in specific styles. She points to one she says was an Amish style because of its simplicity. Another is a Native American design, with a woven willow branch framework. Yet another is designed with an Irish motif.

Someone stops an SUV to thank her for her efforts. Someone else gave her a bag of ornaments to finish up the tree. She added tea lights so the wreaths could be seen at night.

An empty stretch of road and a chain link fence made festive by someone who has nothing, but just wanted to give a little holiday spirit to passing children.

Perhaps that’s the true meaning of Christmas.