A Different Kind of Santa

Emails from the Desert…
Dr. Edgar A. Gamboa





Christmas 2008 came and went. The New Year has begun. Are you one of those who take stock of all the gifts you received from Santa Claus, thank those who kept you in mind during the season, then wonder what to do with all your stuff?

Despite the global economic downturn, we in these United States are still blessed with many material things. CostCo, Wal-Mart, Toys-R-Us, and the ubiquitous shopping malls that proliferate from Oahu to Manhattan, ensure that even a part-time worker can fill those stockings with enough goodies and line the Christmas tree with toys and gifts.

Which, indeed, is a blessing. Everyone loves Santa, no one likes Scrooge. But don’t you get the feeling that perhaps we, in this side of a lopsided globe, just have too many things we don’t really need?

I read about a family who arrived at this juncture – and did something about it.

Instead of sweaters or electronic gadgets or another set of something, these wise parents requested their grown up children to give them, for next Christmas, some charitable deed – an act of kindness – performed to benefit someone else. It could be something as simple as volunteering in a homeless shelter or soup kitchen, buying a stranger a sandwich and a cup of coffee, or teaching a child to read.

One act of kindness that made someone’s day brighter. That was all they asked for Christmas. And the idea caught on.

Their children (and their spouses) came up with all kinds of cool stuff for Christmas gifts -- helping out with Little League sports, collecting blankets for the homeless, donating books to the local library, teaching English to refugees, etc. Soon, their grandchildren came up with their own gifts of kindness – wrapping toys for orphans, collecting school supplies for needy children, distributing gifts to poor families.

The family tradition took root. It became more involved as, year after year, everyone in the family looked for a variety of ways to become a different kind of Santa. Someone delivered a Christmas tree to an “adopted” family and decorated it with gift certificates. The electric and water bill of a senior citizen was fully paid. Colorful backpacks with schools supplies were distributed to students in poor neighborhoods. Orphans across the world were fed and sheltered through monetary donations. Houses and schools in slum areas were gradually built.

The gift-giving rules are simple. The charitable deed has to be done within the year. It can be performed by spending money or giving of one’s time and energy. It can be simple or elaborate, done solo or in teamwork with others. It starts at New Year so that everyone in the family has twelve months to come up with something they could present as their special gift on Christmas Eve.

To keep track, they started taking photos, wrote about their “gifts”, and compiled them in the family scrapbook.. Every Christmas, the family celebrates the birth of the Savior knowing that they had all done something, big or small, to make someone else’s Christmas better.

This humble but remarkable family has captured the true spirit of Christmas. For did not Christ, the reason we celebrate Christmas, say: “Whatever you did for one of these, you did it for me.”?

Filipino-Americans would not find this kind of Christmas giving too unusual, having migrated from a third world where abundance is the exception, rather than the rule. But it is easy to get caught up in the individualistic and materialistic culture of Western society and, in effect, depart from the traditional value of the bayanihan spirit.

Thus, it would be worthwhile for us, Filipino-Americans, to get ourselves and our children more involved in projects that will benefit our kababayans, here in our adopted country and back home in the mother country.

Humanitarian projects, such as medical missions, the construction of schools and clinics, educational funds, and the building of homes (such as those successfully promoted by Gawad Kalinga) can be endeavors worth our time, commitment and effort.

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