Joy of Christmas

People complain every year about Christmas shopping — “What to buy for the person who has everything?”

Some local churches have a ready answer.

Over the next few weeks there will be several alternative gift-giving fairs that offer purposeful gifts that can be given at Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or on birthdays.

The Rev. John Dieterly, the pastor at Peace United Church of Christ, which holds its gift fair on Dec. 2, said many people today feel stressed about the commercialism of Christmas.

“They want to bring more of the meaning back to Christmas,” he said. “And gee, if in a church we can do that — not just through worship, but providing people with an opportunity to provide a meaningful gift, something that truly honors the person who receives the gift and something that can be life changing for the recipient family — why not?”

Dieterly once worked with Heifer Project International, through which donors can buy animals to be used on farms for power or for breeding in Third World countries and other poverty-stricken places.

Each participating farmer agrees to pass on the gift by giving the animal’s first-born female offspring to a neighbor in need.

One option: Give your sweetie a Noah’s Ark Christmas card saying that honeybees bought in his or her name will go to a poor farming family so they can use bees for the production and selling of honey in the fight against hunger.

And another: Buy a one-of-a-kind oil painting for your parents through Ten Thousand Villages, a nonprofit, and feed the artist’s family, a continent away, for a month.

“Last year was the first year and we had a good group of people — and we had more people afterward who said they wished they had known more about it,” says Sheri Chamberlin, this year’s “Gifts of Grace” coordinator at First Lutheran Church. The church will hold its shopping fair on Nov. 17.

There are honor cards from Greensboro Urban Ministry, for example, which will be available and can be bought in denominations of $5.

Designed by artist Bill Mangum, they support the agency’s work with the homeless and hungry.

Westminster Presbyterian began offering alternative giving nights in the 1990s.

The church wanted to recreate the feelings of Christmas past, when holiday commercials at least ran after Halloween.

First Lutheran had long been involved in efforts that benefit others. This year a missions group from the church brought back jewelry and other items from Costa Rica that they hope to sell to raise money for a church there.

In some cases, alternative gift items can be ordered online directly from the nonprofits.

But going the giving fair route offers the opportunity to browse for one-of-a kind items.

“I don’t expect people to come and buy only these things for gifts,” Chamberlin says. “I think it is a balance.”

Comments are closed.