HandyMan and I enjoyed our Christmas with Blue. Like many other people, we made the rounds to various family dinners and events. We overate, napped, opened presents, gave gifts and enjoyed spending time with our families and friends. I hope you also had a wonderful Christmas and spent quality time with friends, family and loved ones!

Blue enjoys playing in a box on Christmas.

A large part of our Christmas festivities was giving and receiving presents. Blue was only slightly more interested in his presents this year than he was last year. As predicted, he enjoyed the boxes and tissue paper much more than most of the actual presents. Nonetheless, all the presents we received were very appreciated (unless it was a toy for Blue that makes obnoxious noises), but one present was a little more unique than most and has prompted HandyMan and I to spend a lot of time thinking about what we’re going to do with it.

You see, while Christmas is meant to be a religious holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus, it often turns into a greed fest that is more about how much “stuff” you get and less about what you actually give. And it should be about the giving. That is why a gift that my in-laws gave us means so much.

After we had opened our presents, my father-in-law presented each of the adults with one last gift, a check for $100 dollars made out to nobody. As he handed out the checks, he explained to us that there are people in need and charities struggling – and that this gift wasn’t for us, but to give to someone in need or a charity of our choice. He told us that we could sign the check over to a charity or cash the check and give money to people who need it, what we did with it was up to us, but it was to go to someone in need. He told us of times when he and his wife were struggling and would have loved to help people during the Christmas season, but were unable to do so. They said they had been blessed this year with more than they needed and wanted to be able to give back and for us, their children, to be able to give back as well. What a great idea!

HandyMan and I haven’t decided what to do with our checks. What we would like to do is help out a family in our community who is struggling, so we plan to talk to our preacher to see if he knows of a family who we could help. Maybe we’ll anonymously pay their electric bill or maybe we’ll just give them cash. I don’t know exactly what we’ll do with it, but I really appreciate my in-laws being so generous with their money and for encouraging us to think of others during a time of the year when it is easy to get caught up in selfishness.

I know many families do things during the holiday season to help out others, maybe working at a soup kitchen or sponsoring families who don’t have the money to buy presents for their children. I applaud those efforts and encourage others to do the same. It doesn’t take a lot to really help people, so as the New Year rolls in lets try to remember those in need and do what we can to help them.

Let’s get 2011 off to the right start!

~ guest post by MRS

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