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For Giving Tuesday
In 2012, the United Nations Foundation teamed up with the 92nd Street Y to establish an international day of charitable giving as a contrast to the preceding long weekend of commercial excess.
#GivingTuesday
The ongoing charitable movement has its own website where you can check for events in your community. A variety of corporations and charitable entities have been collaborating to expand the reach and effectiveness of this movement over the last 7 years.
The only drawback to this is that some view it as an enticement for “spot giving“. Rather than fostering a culture or lifestyle of giving, “spot giving” gives the impression of a once and done donation. This is the bane of charitable organizations.
Obviously, certain times of year and organization-specific events like the American Cancer Society‘s Daffodil Days, Salvation Army‘s Red Kettles and the BSA’s Scouting For Food render much-needed funding for worthy causes but diseases need research funding all year long and the less fortunate need help on an ongoing basis.
Charitable Giving
The shopping frenzy of the last few days has been centered around personal gift-giving for friends and relatives, but we’re reminded of the gentlemen who visit Scrooge prior to his ghostly conversion:
“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”
…
“Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.
What Scrooge initially pledged out of miserly stinginess, we might be obliged to offer out of the emptiness of our pockets. Having already burned through our discretionary spending and then some, we’re often left with nothing to drop into the red kettle or the Toys for Tots donation box.
It is often said that failing to plan is planning to fail. The same is true for charitable giving. If you don’t designate some percentage of your discretionary budget for charitable donations, you can’t help but feel guilty when somebody presents an opportunity to help those in need.
Charitably Forgiving
Regardless of your discretionary budget, there is a gift that can be given with no monetary expense.
Forgiveness is a gift that benefits both the giver and the recipient. As Thanksgiving Day is a reminder to practice gratitude, let Giving Tuesday be your Forgiving Tuesday. Give yourself the gift of peace and health that can come from letting go of grudges and hurt feelings.
Practicing gratitude and forgiveness puts us in the right frame of mind to embrace the weeks of hope, peace, joy and love that Advent embodies. Absorbing these important lessons in virtue, we might come to have an attitude toward Christmas and each other to match that of Scrooge’s nephew:
“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!” ~Fred
To be fair, just as we need to budget charitable giving throughout the year as best we’re able, practicing Christmas Spirit like Fred and the repentant Ebeneezer Scrooge is something to be pursued 24x7x365¼ for our “fellow-passengers to the grave” as well as for ourselves.
A spirit of forgiveness and gratitude is the gift that keeps on giving.