A Christmas of kindness and compassion
Christmas and the holidays should be the kindest time of the year, and hopefully extend this year-round. We can each do something close to home such as surprising a neighbor with a gift or a donation to a local food pantry.
In his first Christmas in the White House Teddy Roosevelt, in 1901, surprised his staff by giving them turkeys. In total 87 turkeys were given out by Roosevelt and his White House steward Henry Pinckney. Teddy was not done though with Christmas surprises.
He sent a “generous” check to Miss Sarah Provost, a teacher in Cove Neck, Long Island so she could buy presents for the students. Teddy’s children had previously attended the school.
During the holidays you can also rally with others for a cause such as preventing homelessness in your community. The Interfaith Center of New York is hosting a meeting this holiday season to find ways so everyone can have access to affordable housing.
No one should suffer unjust eviction or homelessness. I remember one year in a sociology class at Mount St Joseph University we did a collection to help a single mom stay in her apartment. We can also support charity overseas. In fact, children in Liberia just got a special Christmas present from the United States: school lunches. In a nation with so much hunger and poverty, a school lunch is one of the best Christmas presents children can receive.
Many children in impoverished countries like Liberia struggle to get one meal a day.The U. S. Agency for International Development, USAID, is funding this Christmas present, which will provide school meals to 45,000 children in Liberia. The charity Mary’s Meals will distribute the school lunches. The Liberia Christmas gift is reminiscent of President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1953 program called “Operation Reindeer,” which sent food packages to needy countries during the holidays. The public took part by purchasing CARE food packages for needy families overseas. Some of the countries receiving the Christmas food packages were still completing their recovery from World War II.
Today’s global hunger crisis has escalated so much, but yet has gotten so little attention, that we could sure use a revival of the Eisenhower Christmas Food plan. The country in the most desperate need right now is Somalia, where people are starving to death. Drought caused by climate change has ruined crops and caused extreme food shortages. Reports of the horror are coming in. The Mercy Corps country director for Somalia, Daud Jiran, says: “Climate change and conflict are robbing Somali children of their future as we watch. We’ve seen mothers who can do nothing but watch in despair and pain as their children starve to death because they have nothing to feed them.”
Families are having to search days for food, often finding none. They depend on the humanitarian relief agencies. According to Jiran “Our teams in Baidoa and other regions of Somalia report seeing large crowds of people arriving on the edges of town centres on foot or in donkey carts, exhausted and hungry as they flee the fury of the climate crisis.”
Save the Children warns the crisis is only going to get worse as “More than half a million children in Somalia are expected to face the most deadly form of malnutrition by April next year.” Dr. Binyam Gebru of Save the Children in Somalia, pleads “The country has not faced an emergency this critical since 2011 and yet where is the funding? What will it take to jolt the international community awake .... ”
The global hunger crisis goes far beyond Somalia. According to the World Food Program, “Up to 49 million people across 49 countries are in emergency or worse levels of acute food insecurity. Without urgent life-saving action, these populations will be at risk of falling into faminelike conditions.”
We can save millions of lives if we take collective action this Christmas to fight world hunger. At Christmas we could each come up with a plan to help the relief agencies like WFP, Catholic Relief Services, Mercy Corps, UNICEF, Edesia, Save the Children, Mary’s Meals, CARE and others who are struggling to get enough funding.
The Christmas spirit is powerful if we use it to help others. We can make this holiday season one of joy and compassion at home and overseas.