Are we too charitable?

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sweetcharity

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(Before you read my comments, I want you to know that I’m not a total Scrooge. I regularly give to church related charities.)

Have we as a society gotten carried away with charity gift giving during the month of December?

A lot of organizations give gifts to “disadvantaged” children, but the gift giving is done weeks before Christmas. The problem I have with this is that on Christmas morning, children are not waking up to a wrapped present under their Christmas Tree. How does getting a gift on December 15th add to your Christmas morning? (I’m using December 15th as a random date.)

I know of a fireman who works in a community heavily populated with Muslims. The fire department sponsors a gift giving party in December. I asked him if Muslim children attend the party, and if they receive gifts. He said, “Of course they attend and are given gifts. We can’t turn them away”. This statement is not anti-Muslim. I’m simply pointing out that the idea is to give a child a gift in December so that they have something to open on Christmas morning. Giving Muslim children a gift on December 15th has nothing whatsoever to with Christmas.

Every year the local TV News shows a policemen accompanying a child to a store so that the child can buy $100 worth of gifts. Whatever gift that child buys on that shopping spree is not going to be wrapped and opened on Christmas morning.

Last year my office organized a gift giving event. One “needy” child wanted a Selfie-Stick. This implies that the “needy” child has a cell phone.

I’m just turned off on “giving”, so that a “needy” child has a Merry Christmas. I wonder if the gifts are going to “needy” children, or are they going to children of greedy parents? Please feel free to tell me I’m wrong.
 
This is like what Frank Sheed talks about in his excellent and short book “A Map of Life”. Basically if you’re trying to help humanity, that’s a good and noble thing. The problem lies in not knowing or understanding what humanity was made for to begin with, which is of course to love God and share in His life here and after death. So there’s plenty of secular charities that legitimately do the best they can, but this falls short because they’re missing the big picture. To help mankind, you have to know who made it and what it’s intended end is. To quote a professor I had for applied electrical circuitry, if you don’t know what it is or how it works, you can’t fix it.

This is just the result of charity sans theology. Frustrating to be sure.
 
I should point out - I’ve been phone shopping lately, and cell phones aren’t necessarily the expense they once were. I can find a basic smartphone for $20. so that doesn’t necessarily imply the child isn’t needy, even if they have a smartphone.
 
100 dollars worth of gifts is a bit much to me for just child. But, if a Muslim family is too poor to afford toys for their kids, I think it is good to give them some even if they do not celebrate Christmas. Childhood without toys is just sad.

Are there parents that abuse people’s good intentions? No doubt. But, let’s not punish kids for a actions of a few irresponsible adults.
 
Last I heard, more people actually had access to cell phones than clean water.
 
All the organizations that i’m aware of collect gifts early, before mid December, wrap them with the help of volunteers, and give them to families who will give them to the children on Christmas. You have to do it in advance to get everything done.
 
To be honest, Christmas is the time I’m least likely to give to charity. Unless its spare change outside a store or something. I mean, it’s one of the most financially tight times of the year, especially if you have lots of close family.

Apart from that, I generally have a few charities that I contribute to:
Local Parish and Dominican Churches
Local Food Bank
Pro-Life Charities

I’m happy for the Church to have the majority of my charity money. At least then I know it’s going to something good.
 
LOL, OP, your user name is “sweetcharity” with a thread entitled “Are we too charitable?”

Meh, I figure it never hurts to help–yes, sometimes the execution is clumsy, but if we feel like it’s too much at Christmas, or whatever, we have 364 other days to give.
 
We are never too charitable, but the religious part is being left too far behind.
 
If you don’t like how a charity is using the money, just give to a different one.
i like “giving trees” because you can pick out what you want to buy and see where it is going. Most of the trees I see in recent years are collecting for elderly people or for people in homeless shelters or St. Vincent de Paul aid lists, etc. The gifts requested aren’t “selfie sticks” but things like gift cards for the local grocery chain, basic clothing like sweat suits and socks. I figure anybody can enjoy having 10 dollars to buy a Christmas food treat of their choice. I also prefer buying for the elderly because I know that they really appreciate having a gift to open (whether it’s on the 25th or the 15th) and there aren’t 500 charities flooding them with tons of toys and stuff.

I used to enjoy giving Christmas toys when it was a case of like 30 years ago making an outfit for a doll or something like that. I remember painting and decorating an old dollhouse and making it really nice for some kid to enjoy. But now it’s all about Walmart donating a bunch of new plastic junk that I know from seeing around town will all be out on the curb within a few months when the family moves or kid is sick of playing with it. So I’m done with the toy giving. I’d rather buy an 80-year-old man the basketball team jacket he asked for.
 
I agree with what you say about “Shop with a cop”, and similar programs. The kids are right there choosing their gifts. So who is going to take the gifts away till Christmas morning? Not me. My niece was talking about this at dinner. She is a volunteer with a group that is taking the kids on Dec. 4. Now, can you imagine trying to withhold a toy for over 3 weeks from a 6-7yr old? There has to be a better way.
 
AdamPeter said:
To be honest, Christmas is the time I’m least likely to give to charity.
Click to expand...
I get the impression a lot of people don’t give to charity the rest of the year, and all the charities are hoping to make a lot of donations at Christmas that they can draw on for some months, but the amount of requests for funds is overkill. I have a few charities I usually give to on “Giving Tuesday” and I might throw some change in the Salvation Army bell ringers’ pot, but other than that I confine myself to donating to the food collection/ fund raiser my friend runs every year for the food bank and animal shelter, and doing a couple of Church giving trees. If I give a big donation to anybody it will be to the Church itself towards their expenses as they have to be paying the heat bills this time of year.
 
When I was growing up, we used to do “Christmas in July” for missionary families. The idea being you had to start then in order for it to arrive in time!

Homeschooling books were quite popular, iirc.
 
I don't believe we can be too charitable. I believe we should discern better how we are charitable and that doesn't always have to involve $. Sometimes a simple smile toward someone in the grocery line, or allowing a car into traffic ahead of me. Maybe I've waved or nodded to someone. In my view these are all acts of charity and didn't cost anything financially. These I do on a daily basis and sometimes $ is involved but not always. I drove school bus for a couple of school years and we were encouraged to greet and smile toward each kid as they came onto the bus. The reasoning was that that may be the only time that day the child heard kind words or saw a smile directed toward them. It didn't matter that the kid didn't respond in any way back. I liked that reasoning and still do. To me each of the greetings was/is an act of charity.
 
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