This is my 53rd Holiday Season and for the last few years or so, I’ve decorated my apartment with a small but bright Christmas tree, and worked to the sounds of upbeat holiday music via Alexa.
Throughout my life, the Holiday Season has represented many different things: new bikes and toys, delicious foods, seeing favorite family members who visit from afar. Then evolving into Christmas school breaks and parties with friends. Then orchestrating lovely Christmas
experiences for the younger people in my life – nieces and nephews, and children of friends, whom we take ice-skating and to visit Santa to ensure he knows our Christmas wish lists.
When I was little, Mom drove my siblings and me to a “different part of town” where we brought new presents and our old bikes and toys to give to people who were “less fortunate.” Indeed, this was a stark contrast to our day-to-day lives, and I was somewhat profoundly affected – I remember thinking WHY does someone get my DISCARDED bicycle? Why do I have the new one, and these children get my old?
Every year – in fact, every day, – I learn more and more about what it means to be ‘charitable' and about who is “more fortunate” and who is “less fortunate.” About the contexts of dignity and humility. About privilege, not as a pejorative, or a way to criticize oneself, but as a simple recognition that my day-to-day existence has inherent advantages. The textbook definition of charitable is “relating to the assistance of those in need.” By this definition, I can say that I have been the recipient of others’ charity, and I have been a source of charity for others.
I had back surgery and knee surgery in the early 2000s, and in both cases, friends and relatives gave their time to stay with me and help with cooking, taking my dog out, going up and down the stairs in my apartment building. I was the recipient of their charity. It is important for me to always try to remember that when I give to another, it is not from a place of power or ego, it is from a place of simply assisting someone in need. In the next turnaround, I can be the person in need.
The Holiday Season is a time of giving: indeed, the spirit is visible everywhere: on street corners, outside the supermarket, in the shopping mall, in places of worship - people are geared up to recognize that there are many people in need, and that the Holidays times represent giving more than any time of the year. It has been a long time since my mom drove my siblings and me in her big station wagon to the different part of town, where we shared our used toys with other children, and I have learned a lot since then. It can feel easy to think people with more are giving to people with less – people with more power are giving to people with less. Logistically, that might seem true. But each act of giving – whether it is friends helping others get through surgery, dropping money into the Salvation Army bucket
outside the supermarket, or joining a volunteer organization to assist with strategized, organized neighborhood improvement – is really just assisting, propping up, sharing an experience where one just helps another.
When I originally traveled to Colombia with Habitat for Humanity I was attracted by the
non-profit’s mission is to “provide a hand up, not a handout.” Now, as I work with Building Trust Americas, I think that more than anything, as I have had the privilege to sweat and toil alongside our also sweating and toiling recipients in Colombia, I want to always consider charity as an energy of partnership, not as a transaction of “giving to the less fortunate.” I want to consider removing my preconceived ideas and biases around charity and remember that I have received just as much as I have given. I receive every day. I try to give every day.
The Holiday Season is the annual crescendo, the encore of the year, where stars stand out and giving is illuminated, and it is a time to remember to keep my ego in check and remember that we are all humans worthy of dignity and respect. We all receive and we all give.
Our writer is Sarah Elizabeth Diminich, BTA Board Member
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