My wife and I will be starting a new Christmas tradition this year. We don't have anywhere to be on Christmas day anymore--my parents winter in Florida so they aren't around. My sister and brother-in-law moved to Ohio this year, so we won't go to see them and their kids anymore. So rather than just sit around and watch NBA basketball all day, we have decided to make Christmas a day of volunteering instead.
This year, we will be helping out at Father Carr's Place 2 Be and their Christmas meal service. I'm hoping that we are assigned meal delivery (even though we will have single digit temps and below zero wind chills Monday morning) since I hate ham and having to help cook or pack up hundreds of ham dinners puts me off my appetite.
I'm not going to try and lay a guilt trip on you since until this year I didn't give of my time on Christmas day either--but maybe more of us should consider that the "real meaning of the season" instead of seeing who can "win the holidays" or deciding which gift needs to be opened last as the "grand finale" of seasonal over-indulgence.
It's one thing to put a couple of bucks in the Red Kettle a couple of times a year--or to drop off a toy or a coat in a box. But it's a totally different experience to see the people you are helping face-to-face--to hear their gratitude and to see that they absolutely needed that assistance. It might give us all a new definition of "gift".
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