Is it just me, or is it really every New Year's or Christmas season when you hear columnists for a certain paper that shall remain unnamed describing how they met with people so poor they can't feed their n children and send them to school on their meagre (blue-collar job X)'s wages, then saw how their efforts could help, and ended up not buying anything for their own kids so they could share the true meaning of Christmas?
Maybe it's guilt the poor can't enjoy what the rest of us take for granted.
Maybe it's a desire to inculcate that experience in their own children.
Maybe... I don't know.
And I'm cheesed off. Every time I see something like that I lose a little more tooth enamel. I promise you, this isn't a rant by a materialistic hypocrite. For one, Christmas is about giving.
Anybody can be like the columnists. But my concern is how their kids, the recepients of this, um... gesture interpret the less fortunate. Is it:
a. "Daddy, that's so touching. Can we open our piggy banks and give? Or is there a community project we could join?"
b. "Where's my present?" (insert pleading action here) "Don't tell me you went to the family service centre again???"
c. "What's for dinner?"
If their response is (b) or (c), the poor will end up simply those who deprive them of material gain just by acting so pitifully in front of their parents. That's the last attitude I want my future children or anybody to have. And this whole 'guilt' thing smacks of patronisation--the one thing our turkey- and present-slushed minds are unequipped to handle.
I truly admire those who spend time helping out the less fortunate in society--it is a command from the Lord Himself (Matthew 25:31-46). But I believe it's wrong to let this filter down to refusing to give presents (material ones, anyway) for that reason. And declaring it in a public medium like a newspaper... not once, not twice, but every year? Sheesh.
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