it's a beautiful thing...

I just browsed the gift catalog at Heifer International, http://www.heifer.org. Here is a truly great antidote to all those worst-of-the-season ads urging you to "give yourself a gift" of whatever the advertiser is selling. The idea is to give a family in some other part of the world an animal which can help them create food and clothing. What a cheerful, hopeful charity!

My grandmother, Evenlyn Ashbrook, has been giving us "kids" Heifer gifts for Christmas over the last half century. (Bless her, she keeps us supplied with National Geographic subscriptions too.) When we were very young we were disappointed that we got just a slim envelope, and some other family elsewhere got a farm animal. But soon enough we saw the wisdom of redeeming the process of gift-giving from the passions of acquisitiveness, by giving gifts to people that need them. Rather than to us kids (of whatever age) with full toy boxes.

This year, at the instigation of relatives (thanks, cousin Kris!) there's a little old lady in Texas who is going to get a menagerie from her family... Shhh, don't tell her.

Merry Christmas, all!

Posted by jrose [Personal] ( December 10, 2007 10:05 PM ) Permalink | Comments[2]