I really wanted to do the giving tree, but my parish didn’t give us enough notice.  Next year I want to plan ahead and do it.  And I want to involve my son who by then will be almost 5.

Our parish does an annual giving tree for a homeless shelter/soup kitchen and we pick an item suggestion off the tree for each of our family members’ to fulfill.  This year I found out that our parish is one of 4 parishes that are the generic emergency donators - in other words, some parishes are given specific items requested by the shelter and other parishes are asked to donate anything so that if they “forgot” anything or suddenly need more of something, they can check our donations to see if there’s anything they can use.  That meant we could go crazy and if something was on sale I could just buy it even if the item wasn’t on the giving tree!  We went crazy with Old Navy fleece in all different sizes!  My older girls (ages 7 & 10) had more fun because they weren’t limited to finding a particular size.  If they found something they liked, we bought it for the tree!

This year we are also doing something new - the local children’s hospital is accepting donations of homemade fleece no-sew blankets (the ones you make fringe around the edges and tie the two fleece pieces together).  So we are going to make one as a family.  I got the idea from the Catholic school my children attend because they have been making these blankets for their service projects this advent this year.  I really like the idea of making your service project something that incorporates your talent as well as your time and treasure.

Kim I love that blanket idea—I can picture your whole family enjoying that project together! Awesome!

Our parish had a giving tree but it only had tags reading “$25 grocery gift card” which is, I suppose, a great gift but not a lot of fun.  We did that and since we still had a hankering to buy some toys, we did Toys For Tots.  Since I was a single college student, my personal tradition has been to buy the Holiday Barbie for Toys For Tots.  I know I would have loved such an over-the-top fabulous doll for Christmas and I hope, for the last twenty years, so have some other little girls.

We give to St Vincent de Paul or Aid to the Church in Need.

My parish has a giving tree, and the kids’ school also does shoe box gifts filled with school supplies and a little trinket gift to be sent overseas to third world children.  We sometimes make up food and gift hampers to give locally, and our local Catholic paper puts in a magazine around this time of year for financial donations for developing communities where people are being taught to take care of themselves by farming crops and animals.

There isn’t anything organized at our parish for this, but there are various efforts in the community - a toy run, collecting money to give food for people’s Christmas dinners, a coat drive, a collection of more practical items for the local women’s shelter, etc.

Frankly, I have giving paralysis!  I always try to put together a few practical household type things (sheets, towels, etc) for the women’s shelter and some money for the food ministry, but beyond that I just get overwhelmed.  There are so many needs out there!  For example, I go to the Catholic Culture website to read something, see their appeal for money, but then also see Food for the Poor’s prominent ad featuring a starving child.  Money for a communications ministry (not that it isn’t important) or money to buy food for a starving child?  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!  If you choose the starving child, do you give money to feed the poor in a foreign country, or do you give money to a charity that buys animals or whatever to help a family provide their own support?  Or do you dilute your giving dollars down and just give a little bit here there and everywhere?  There are so many appeals from so many different quarters - it makes my head spin.  How do I decide?  Can I ever feel like I’ve done “enough”?  And what on earth is enough?  Ack! 

Clearly this is something that has been on my mind a great deal these days…  can you tell?

Our parish does a giving tree with ornaments for a specific child (age, sex, clothes size, a couple toy wishes… no name listed).  We usually take a couple ornaments and this year we gave pjs, cute outfits, and a couple of toys.

We give to some of the children on Reece’s Rainbow International Down Syndrome Adoption Ministry, to help grow their individual grants so that a family might be able to afford to rescue them out of the orphanages.  My two oldest boys have specific little girls that they pray for, so we buy ornaments with their pictures for the Christmas Angel Tree fundraiser.  For a couple of the other special kids we pray for who are not on the Angel Tree, we collect change.  And we give a little to some of the fundraisers of families who are trying to bring these kids home.  My next goal is to get out some more blog posts about these little ones, if I can get my computer in order.

I used to give only to Catholic or pro-life causes, but I really believe supporting adoption of special needs children from countries where these children are institutionalized from birth and treated little better than animals is another -very important- way to build a culture of life.  There are very few Catholic families as of yet adopting these kids, and I am always wondering why and praying that will change.

Please check out my blog to see some really adorable little girls in desperate need of a family, or at least a donation or your prayers.  And please check out Reece’s Rainbow to see many, many other equally deserving boys and girls in the same situation.  Hope it’s ok to ask this here.

Reece’s Rainbow sounds awesome, I will definitely check it out.  We take tags off the Angel Tree at church and buy the items requested. My daughter’s girl scout troop “adopts” a needy family each Christmas and everyone donates 1-2 items—whatever we can afford to make someone else’s Christmas a little brighter.

Our parish does an angel tree. This year most of the requests were for gift cards for the local grocery store. At first I was disappointed, but the I saw it as a chance to be like St. Nicholas. I talked with my girls about it, telling them that we were feeding the poor, like St. Nicholas. We provided cards with enough money to buy a weeks worth of groceries instead of the $25 amount that was suggested.
We have given to the food and toy drives at my daughters’ schools.
We also give an extra Christmas donation to all of the charities we support throughout the year.

I really have to watch it, because I could easily go crazy with holiday donating. I just want everyone to have a blessed Christmas!