Giving Gifts
December 2008 Christmas gift giving
I give gifts to children every year, often before Christmas. It used to be in the form of medical mission done in my clinic and scheduled at least a month before the date. Most of the medicines I gave was in the form of multivitamins, the kind most mothers want to have. Then the cost of medicines soar, and less and less drug companies gave their support in the form of samples. The little budget I had will benefit only a small number of children so I tried other ways of sharing whatever I had to the less fortunate.
There was a time when I found our refrigerator filled with imported chocolates. They were gifts from relatives abroad, patients coming home from vacations, relatives of patients living abroad etc, etc. And my family is not so fond of chocolates. We can only consume a bar or two for the whole month and so it accumulated. I gave everything to the neighborhood kids last Christmas.
Last month, while I was sorting and decluttering my kids’ belongings. The thought of giving their old toys to other kids came to my mind. Why not? The toys are very clean (cleaning is done once a week) and are as good as new. So I asked their permission and then we started sorting.
The neighborhood kids started singing Christmas carols on every doorstep since the start of December. And whenever a group of these kids start caroling, we tell them to get their gift on the 23rd, and that was last night.
The kids were very happy with their gifts. In fact there were so many of them that we ran out to things to give. I had to run to the clinic and find something that could fit as gift. Its good those giveaways given by medical representatives got accumulated all through the year were all placed in one corner of the clinic. It was easy to bring everything out and then given away. My kids helped me in giving and the feeling was just indescribable.
Merry Christmas to all!