A Christmas Giving story

As Noah began his second year Christmas shopping, the shopping carts were filled with toys and clothing.

Some years ago, we began a tradition in the family where we would donate money or some sort of work to a worthy cause before Christmas.

That morphed into a project that my son Matthew and his wife Crystal began about three years ago. It has grown by leaps and bounds, and the rest of the family, including my wife Jan, my daughter Kelly and her boyfriend Chris, my grandson Noah and our friend J.D. participated in the project on Sunday evening, when they descended on a local store and spent several hours shopping.

It is a project that won’t actually be completed until later this week, as toys, clothing and fully-prepared Christmas dinners are distributed to several families with 16 children, whose ages range from 2 to 17 years old.

Included among the gifts were a bicycle, a Wii, three iPods, three Nintendo DOS's, seven video games, Legos, makeup, dolls, shirts, coats, hats, scarves, mittens, socks, underwear, coats, shoes, bed sheets, blankets, boots, fishing poles, fishing gear, board games, the game Elefun, Cabbage Patch kids, arts and crafts, clay, bean bags - and the list goes on.

And in the note from my son Matthew, telling his friends about the results, he adds: “We simply can't thank you enough for supporting the families that we bought Christmas for this year. The generosity of our friends is amazing and we are simply amazed each and every year.”
Most of the time, I’m just proud of my children and their friends. Sometimes, however, I burst with pride. Job superbly done, guys. Merry Christmas.

Jerry LaVaute is a special writer for Heritage Newspapers. He can be reached at glavaute@gmail.com or call 1-734-740-0062.