By David Stanczak
Christmas is this Sunday. Merchants are doing their countdown: only 3 more shopping days until Christmas. That means, if you haven’t done it already, getting presents for your friends, family, spouse, significant other, etc. It also means that, if you haven’t already done it, you need to do it quickly (or come up with a good excuse for not getting it done on time (“the dog ate my shopping list and my money, Russian hackers got into my phone and deleted my notes, an identity thief maxed out all my charge cards, my car wouldn’t start, there were earthquakes, tornados, anti-Trump demonstrators”, etc.).
Unless we know immediately what to get each person on our gift list, gift selection involves asking ourselves what each person “needs”. But if we think about it for a bit, in most cases, it will become apparent that our intended recipient doesn’t need anything in the common meaning of the term.“Need” in the Christmas gift sense means something the person would probably like and use if we bought it. But in our concern for buying the right gift for everyone on our Christmas list, we should not forget that there are people out there, in our community or elsewhere, who really do need something. The list of people and their needs are endless: People who have been forced out of their homes by war in Aleppo and elsewhere, children who have nothing to eat or coats to wear, kids in hospitals like St. Jude’s who count on everyone’s generosity to keep the hospitalrunning, the poor in our own community who either don’t have the money to make a good Christmas dinner or a home to eat it in, wounded veterans, who need more than they’re getting from the VA, people across the world in need of basic medical care. The organizations who help these people aren’t hard to find. They advertise online, send solicitations in the mail, and are as ubiquitous as the bell ringers at the red kettles.
When we say the Our Father, we pray “thy will be done.” His will is done in most cases by people like us who try to do it. Christmas is a good time to try. Please make an effort to address the needs of those who aren’t on our list; unlike those who already are, their needs are not hard to figure out.
David Stanczak, a Forum commentator since 1995, came to Bloomington in 1971. He served as the City of Bloomington’s first full-time legal counsel for over 18 years, before entering private practice. He is currently employed by the Snyder Companies and continues to reside in Bloomington with his family.
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