Christmas Gifts

My church is doing Advent cards this year from SALT project, instead of a traditional Advent calendar. Today's challenge, "Find a little--or a big!--way to be generous today: hold the door open for someone, pay for someone's coffee, do a stranger a simple favor."

I confess, it didn't change my plans for today. It did make me think differently about one of my plans: stopping by the local community center. It's not one of the city run community centers, but a nonprofit. Its services are things like reading classes for kid and helping people get on SNAP and WIC. Today, I was dropping off peanut butter from my church and gifts for Christmas from my partner, Matt, and me.

We collect the peanut butter once a month, so I most always have some small stash to drop off. Today, it was around fifty pounds of peanut butter, which will be used to stock emergency food boxes for families. The gifts are a tradition Matt and I started the first year we were dating. Our gift to each other is limited to an ornament, spending $20 or less. Instead, we spend money on a family without resources to give gifts to their kids.

As we're shopping, I'm aware that, in some ways, this is a selfish choice. It's really fun to shop for Christmas presents for kids. We're shopping because a parent or caregiver isn't able to shop. We get to decide what it is best for the kids. We feel good about it when it's all done. It's also something most people would think of as an act of generosity.

This year, we dropped off a bag near filled with a set of books, a toy, an outfit, and a pair of shoes for each child in the family. The center is trying to get some consistency across gifts, so there were fewer things than in years past. I still think the kids will have a decent Christmas even if their mom can't come up with any other gifts. When I tucked the gift receipts into a Christmas card for her, I debated whether or not to sign our names. I ended up not. "Abby and Matt" wouldn't reveal much, but I felt better with her not knowing, letting her imagine who else cared about her kids.

I think about that nudge to be generous in some way today, and it feels weird. In part, at least, it's because generosity seems to always imply money. I like that the creators include things having nothing to do with money. Apparently, I look like I know where I'm going, so people often ask me for directions when I'm walking places; I'd never counted that as generous.

For me, what many would also call generosity is better called faithfulness. I think of generosity as giving extravagantly. My resources don't allow me to do that. Instead, I give regularly, faithfully, and rarely impulsively--at least when it comes to money. Even this Christmas gift adventure was part of how I was taught that.

As a child, when my family was barely making ends meet, we bought gifts for the children most in need in our school. If I remember correctly, grandparents and an aunt and uncle participated, too. Likely, they bore the bulk of the financial burden. This was before angel trees existed. In a rural community, people know. As children, we were included in picking out gifts for our classmates, including many conversations about how we should never, ever mention this at school. Gifts were dropped off at homes, quietly, along with food for the holidays. One year, a boy in my class brought the Beetlejuice house shoes I had chosen for him to school to show off. He had no problem telling everyone where they came from, which I told my mother as soon as I got home.

In a season when there is pressure to buy, and maybe buy some more, and then pick up something for that person you forgot, we would do well to turn to our faithfulness rather than a fleeting desire to be generous. What have we chosen to do with our resources? What are we investing in beyond ourselves? Which of our hopes for the world are we fulfilling with what we have to offer?