Christmas Philanthropy

I decided this year that the kids should start learning about philanthropy from an early age. Nothing overly complicated, but something they can understand.

Our church is making care packages for parishioners who are overseas in the military, and they requested that people have their kids make artwork. This was my first suggestion but Xander had trouble understanding who they were, how they'd get the pictures, do we know them, etc. etc. So, I thought maybe we could make some Christmas artwork to cheer up residents of a local nursing home. Then we could deliver them in person and the kids might grasp the process a little better if they saw the process from start to finish.

We got to work last Saturday. I drew lots of Christmas tree outlines onto construction paper.

Then I gave the kids some Christmas-colored paint and let them go to work.


As they were painting my mind started rambling and I thought maybe making all Christmas trees could be bad. What if there were Jewish residents? Or residents of no faith. Would I need Hannukah artwork? Snowmen? Would I offend some people with Christmas trees? (See, and we all wonder where Xander gets his stressful thought processes). I quickly remembered that there was a Christian nursing home here in town so I figured that we'd pick that one for our contribution. If they're in a Christian facility they should enjoy Christmas trees. Problem solved.

We got all of 10 trees painted Saturday. We even put glitter on them. Jordis did two more today while Xan was at school. She and visited the nursing home yesterday to see how many residents there are. I don't think we'll be able to make pictures for all of them, but they said they could break it down into smaller groups by choosing a particular unit or set of people, say those who don't get many visitors. So, whatever we end up making they'll happily take and distribute. They even had a box of toys for Jordis to play with while we visited, so I think she'll happy to return.

Ten down, a whole bunch to go!