I've been thinking this week about what I will do this year to spread a little Christmas cheer. Last year I was able to give some food and clothes to a couple of the teenage kids I worked with without them knowing it came from me and it was magic to see how excited they were.
I try and do something anonymous for someone as my way of saying thanks to whoever the people were who helped us growing up. Things were pretty difficult as a kid. I remember one year when it was really tough. At that time we pretty much lived on bread and jam (made from fallen fruit we collected) and tinned soup. I know that Mum often just ate bread and dripping and whatever food we kids left on our plates. We were known as 'the poor kids' at the school we went to at the time.
A few days before Christmas when we opened the door there were two HUGE washing baskets filled with food! I seriously can see it as clear as day just thinking about it! I was 8 years old and I just thought that Santa was amazing to have left all this early for us :) I could not understand why my mother couldn't stop crying as we were unpacking the baskets. She did a great job at keeping her difficulties from us and I really had no idea how much she struggled until I was older. Seeing those two baskets felt like we had won the lottery, I was so excited at the time!
By the time I was 12 our circumstances had improved somewhat and my mother took me shopping to make up a basket for a local family. She explained to me that that those food baskets had come at a time when she was desperate to keep our family together and that she was making a hamper every year from now and donating it. She had contacted the local social worker and got the details of a family in need. So each year I would shop with her for the hamper and as an adult I always do something at Christmas as my way of 'paying it forward'.
This week I decided what I am going to do this year. I'm sending Christmas cards and some care packages to soldiers through a wonderful organisation called
Any Soldier. They distribute letters and parcels to soldiers who don't get mail from home. I visited their website and it is very simple to use, you search through the requests and then apply to get the details sent to you. Then you just follow the instructions. I chose a unit that is remote, has no showers or refrigeration. They requested mainly letters, tarps, tools, instant foods and hygiene items.
I think of those soldiers out there in the cold winter on Christmas day and it's a no brainier to send them some cards and letters for Christmas. I suppose having kids the same age as many of these young men and women really makes me feel for them. I couldn't imagine my kids that far away from home, in a war zone. I have started writing my Christmas cards so I can get them in the post next week. And in case you're wondering it's not about supporting the war ( I don't) but it is about just taking five minutes to let people know they matter.
Jack, over at
Adventures in Voluntary Simplicity issued a challenge yesterday in his post '
Lets start a Revolution'. He decided to put money in envelopes along with a note and leave them at places to be found. It's a wonderful post and a great challenge to do some random acts of kindness in the lead up to Christmas. Time are tough for a lot of people right now, so little act's of kindness are even more important.
I was reminded of this letter:
By Francis P. Church, first published in The New York Sun in 1897. [See The People’s Almanac, pp. 1358–9.]
"We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:
Dear Editor—
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little.
In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus!
It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus.
The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart.
Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood"
