We opted out of Christmas gifts and paid them forward

This Christmas, my family decided to alter tradition a bit and eliminate the gift exchange from our holiday celebration. After discussing this option for the past several years, but never actually following through with it, we finally made an agreement to stick with it this Christmas.

Shortly after indulging in sugar-rimmed mimosas and a filling breakfast on Christmas morning, my dad called us all together for a “family meeting.” He told us a story about Jill, one of his co-workers who is active in the local domestic violence women’s shelter. Just prior to Christmas, Jill sent an e-mail to her and my dad’s fellow staff members asking for volunteers to sponsor a family at the shelter this Christmas. Within hours, every family on the list was cared for.

My dad told us about the woman he helped. She recently left the shelter with her young kids, found a job, and is currently trying to rebuild a good life for her family. She takes two busses to work each day, but is determined to make it on her own. My dad wrote Jill a check, and she took the money to Walmart to buy clothes, toys and apartment necessities for this woman’s family.

The next day, Jill reported back on her successes. After delivering the items to the families in the shelter, Jill visited the woman my dad helped. This woman had little in her apartment, and cried grateful tears of happiness when Jill arrived with a car full of wrapped necessities that she cannot yet afford to buy on her own.

My dad said he did the easy part. He “just wrote a check”. But, he made the choice to visit the bank that day to help a woman who needed money more than he and my mom do. He reminded us how we should not wait to help others, and that giving should happen today.

The expression “pay it forward” refers to the notion of paying a favor not back, but forward – repaying good deeds not with payback, but with new good deeds done to new people. After my dad finished sharing what a strong effect giving to the battered women had on him, he explained that he and my mom recently stumbled upon some unexpected good fortune of their own. Both recently received a bit of extra money before Christmas this year, and in the spirit of paying it forward, they decided to split it four ways – they kept a quarter for themselves and evenly split the rest between my brother, sister, me.

While this may have slightly broken our no-gift rule this year, the presentation and receiving of these checks was perceived quite differently. It was not so much a Christmas gift as it was a way for my parents to pay their good fortune forward. They took something they had the ability to share and passed it onto three people they knew needed it.

The morning of Christmas did not seem entirely like the Christmas we have known in the past, but my whole family agreed that we captured a little more of that true Christmas spirit this year than we have in years past. Instead of spending our morning opening presents, we talked about giving, reflected on our year and considered ways we could each, in our own ways, pay good deeds forward.