Words I associate with Christmas are excitement, wonder, Jesus, joy and guilt.
Every year I do stories on community groups trying desperately to raise money to buy needy children and families gifts to put under their trees so the kids don’t wake up and think Santa forgot them. Meanwhile, I’m just trying to find something to buy to “even up” how much I’m spending on my sons and asking for more ideas from other family members so I feel like I’ve done enough, when we all have too much anyway.
Many of these charities also collect food because some families don’t have the money to buy food for Christmas dinner, or feed their children while school is out for the holidays. I’m at home waiting until I can breathe again after stuffing myself at a meal so that I can have another piece of pumpkin pie, another cookie or more cake. There’s just too much.
Doing these stories often adds to my feeling of guilt, and I do try to help. My husband asked me — instead of getting one of the gifts I was going to buy him — to fill an Operation Christmas Child shoe box and not to tell him what I bought, but to make a list and give it to him at Christmas. It was fun picking out toys and gifts and imagining a little boy in another country opening the box.
The woman I wrote about in today’s paper who is getting (buying — they’re not free) a Habitat for Humanity of Pope County house, told me several stories about growing up as one of 11 (!) children. They were poor, and you can imagine trying to provide for that many kids.
OK, well, maybe you can’t. I can’t.
I asked her what Christmas was like when she was growing up. She told me a wonderful story about how one Christmas when her mom and dad got all the kids together. “‘This year we’re just going to celebrate Jesus, and we’re going to focus on how good God has been to us this year. … There aren’t going to be any gifts,’ [Mom] said. We would have none of it. We made gifts out of paper, and we painted rocks, and somebody found some kittens.”
No matter that they couldn’t afford to feed the kittens. They were kids, and what a wonderful find. She said her creative brothers made her parents a rocking chair out of wooden flats. “We were determined that we would give each other at least homemade gifts,” she told me.
A friend of her family’s from the church they attended when they lived in New York called her mother and said the family had been on her mind, and she wanted to buy them gifts. As I interviewed this woman, she started crying.
“I’d never seen so many gifts in my life – they were beyond the tree; they were piled against the wall — there was a baby bed, all kinds of things — it was the best Christmas. I don’t cry because I’m sad; I cry because God is good,” she said.
Because she’s divorced and has struggled financially, she and her two adorable little girls have been recipients of help during the holidays.
“The generosity of people will astound you,” she said. “Last year was wonderful for my girls. There were so many gifts that I told my mom not to buy any; there was a lot. I feel really guilty saying yes to people, but if this year has taught me anything — and I work hard; I’m not a lazy person — it’s to say yes to God; not to say yes all the time, but if somebody says, ‘I want to bless you,’ you are opening up a door for them to be blessed in return.”
For the past several years, my dad has sent me a check with money to pick a child’s name from The Salvation Army Angel Tree. This year, he included a little piece of paper with his Christmas list. It was blank.
Dad has the right idea. But I’ll be honest. I’m probably not going to stop accepting gifts, and I love buying presents for my family.
But, it’s not what you have; it’s what you do with it.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.