This year, the girls at school and I took part in the ‘Adopt a Family’ program that the school district does every year. We sat down and made a list of ideas that we could get each family member. Armed with that list, and the “Wish List” from the family, we shopped. Although there are only eight of us in this generous group of women, seeing the pile of gifts for this family in our social workers office, you would think there had been an army of us.
We did stockings for each family member, filling them with items that we would get for our own families. We split the ‘wish lists’ up, each of us getting one or two items off of each list. We pondered over each gift, sometimes stressing, because we wanted to be sure this family had a 'better than' good Christmas.
The end result – a smile on the face of the dad when he spotted the stockings and then said his kids have never had a Christmas stocking. A bigger smile on the dad’s face when told that there was even a stocking for him.
The end result – knowing that there will be one family waking up on Christmas morning to a Christmas that they’ve never had before.
This is what the true spirit of Christmas is all about: the gift of giving, and not having any thought of receiving something in return. Of opening our hearts and showing kindness, warmth and love to complete strangers.
Needless to say, there are eight women whose hearts are doing the happy dance as we walk around the rest of the afternoon with oversized smiles on our faces.
Merry Christmas, ladies. I'm honored that I get to surround myself on a daily basis with women who are as kind and generous as all of you.
