Tis the Season

Every Year at my place of employment they have an “angel tree” where you adopt an angel for Christmas and get these kids some Christmas gifts. For the last two years I have been the chosen one of our team to choose the angels, and collect the donations, and do the shopping.
This is something that I do not mind doing at all. Which goes against everything I do mind…I hate to shop, and I hate to spend money.
Difference here, is it is not all my money, and it is for a child that otherwise may not get anything. So I really enjoy going out and getting these gifts.
They are so sad in some of the things they put on their slip as “needs” We “adopted” 3 year old twin girls, and got they a coat, and shoes as well as little sweatshirts, and we got the Barbie collections movie(three movies) and a pink Barbie CD player. So they got everything that they asked for and a bit more.
It is always hard for me to do these things on my own without a little nudge.
Not because I don’t want to help, but it always seems like I go through the season thinking of where the money is going to come from for the gifts that I need to buy, and where all the time is going to come from to do baking if I am going to give that sort of gift, and to go to all the “parties” that we are invited to, and still decorate the house, do all of that jazz, and I don’t even have kids!!
Anyway, it seems that the season starts, then it is over, and I never even took time to really “give”.
I always strive to be a better person at seeing those in need, and doing something for them. And usually the rest of the year I really do pretty good, but the time when perhaps they need things more because of the cold and such, is when I don’t think I have the time….
There was a tradition that my family did when I was growing up that I have tried to continue in some form since I have left home, and that is…
We would get two or three big cardboard boxes, and fill them with food. Turkeys, potatoes, you know the such, and then if we had anything else, gift type things, we would include those as well. Then we would carry each box to a family’s house that we felt would benefit from this, drop it off, ring the doorbell, and run.
We had such a great time doing this, and we never really knew how the family felt, or if they did indeed benefit from this gift, but we always had a good time doing it.
That is the type of giving I like. The kind that is anonymous.
I hope that this year when things are tough that we can all find the true meaning of Christmas, and enjoy our families! I am certainly going to do my best.