Editorial: Give gift of charity this holiday
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It doesn’t matter what holiday you are celebrating. Knowing you have more people on your list than you can afford to gift is stressful.
Now what if you weren’t looking at just your parents and your kids and your sister and your nieces and nephews and your friend at work? What if the gifts you were giving were gifts of support for the coming year?
And what if there just wasn’t enough money in the budget or time? We can all empathize with that, can’t we?
That is the challenge for charities this holiday season.
With a late Thanksgiving, the Christmas giving lost almost a week from the first ring of a Salvation Army bell. Maybe that doesn’t seem like much. What’s a week?
A week at the holidays is something we should all know flies by like a red-nosed reindeer. A week is not enough time to get your shopping all done and wrapped and hidden. A week doesn’t get all the cookies baked or the candy molded or the fudge poured. A week is nothing in the course of decorating a tree and lighting up the house.
If we all had an extra week, we could fit in more kid’s chorus concerts before school is out. We could make it to those breakfasts at school or the lunches with friends or the cookie exchanges at church.
We could make more lists and do more things. Even better? We could sit down and take a break and take a long and blessed breath to actually enjoy the lights and the music and the people we love.
That’s the value of a week to a person at the holidays.
The value of a week to a charity is seven days to remind people that at this time of giving and sharing, a quarter in a red kettle can make the difference between having enough money to provide the vital services to the homeless or the low-income or turning someone away.
And the Western Pennsylvania Salvation Army still has money to raise toward a $2.4 million goal.
None of us can create more time. We can only make the most of the time we have, especially as it ticks slowly through Hanukkah and toward Christmas and onward to New Year’s Day.
And maybe the gift we give ourselves is the warm feeling of doing what we can for the Salvation Army, Operation Santa Claus and other charities close to our hearts and homes.