The Giving Tree

Let the countdown begin! Only 13 more days until Christmas! I still have yet to get any Christmas shopping done! I did however purchase some polly pocket toys for a little girl in need. Every year my family adopts a family and purchases things for them that they are in need of. My family decided that we don't need anything this year and we should give back. So as I was strolling through the kids section at Target I noticed a bunch of children begging their parents to get them the nurf gun or barbie doll that they wanted. This reminded me of a childhood story that my mother used to read to me when I was little called "The Giving Tree." This is a story in which I will never forget. The little boy in the story asks the tree for everything, shade to sit in, apples to eat and eventually he cuts down the tree to make a boat. He leaves the tree with nothing but a stump left and when he returns as an older man the tree says he has nothing left to give. The boy, now an old man, says that all he wants is a quiet place to sit and think, in which the tree replies that a stump is a good place for doing just that.

Are we all guilty of this as a whole? Do we take and take until there is nothing left to get? And then only when there is nothing left do we realize how little we actually need? I think about this story especially around Christmas time. We all ask for gifts and send out our Christmas lists to our families in hopes to receive everything we wanted. But when all is said and done, the gifts are all unwrapped from under the tree, what are we left with? Just our families company, after we have sucked all of the giving out of them that is all they have left to give is themselves.

Point of the story: How are you going to give back this Christmas season?