Holiday Breakfast December 17th

                                     Holiday Breakfast December 17^th

By Mayor Albert Kelly

My hope is that you are heading into the holiday season in good spirits rather than harried and stressed which seems to be our resting position these days. My hope is that you will have opportunities during the holidays to spend time with assorted family spread over time and space- as well as some friends that you may not have had time to connect with over the course of the year. The alternative is obsessing about what gifts to buy and how to pay for it all.

Sometimes, at least when it comes to adults, the gifts themselves matter less than the time, thought and sentiment behind the actual gift. I say that because when you come down to it, what people want to really know is that they matter. Gifts can signify that, but so can time, words, and nurturing a relationship. It is a little bit different for children; they more often need something tangible, like a gift, to demonstrate their worth or that they matter. Gifts become just the sort of vehicle to convey that message for children.  

As it relates to children, gifts also become ways to spark new avenues of discovery, creativity or possibility. Give a child some art supplies and you might just tap into something they didn’t know they had. The same can be said for athletic equipment, science kits, or any number of other things that a child may encounter for the first time in their lives. Not so much with adults who largely know their likes and dislikes as well as their limits.

But all of these thoughts and possibilities look very different when viewed through the lens of instability. I mention instability because that’s the residue of poverty. Say what you will about poverty, but the thing it breeds is instability. In the life of a child, that instability can go a long way toward shaping the trajectory of their lives.

That instability is what we hope to counter in small measure on Monday, December 17^th between 8:00am and 10:00am through the Holiday Breakfast at the Marino Center located at 10 Washington St in Bridgeton. The Holiday Breakfast is open to all people of goodwill to come and break bread together. The price of admission is one unwrapped gift (toys, devices, games, etc.) for boys or girls between the ages of 2 years and 17 years-old.  

Once the gifts are sorted out they will be wrapped and organized for boys and girls based on age-appropriateness, matched to children and families in need and distributed by the Bridgeton Area Police Athletic League (PAL) which is a youth-serving organization. My hope is that you will see the gift as more than merely helping a disadvantaged child in the abstract. It helps to think of the gift as a message to the child who receives it that they matter and that someone cares. It might also be something that taps into a new talent or an unrealized area of interest.

When possible, gifts will be given to parents to give to children because regardless of financial circumstances, every parent wants to be able to put a smile on the face of their child. In other instances, it will be a grandparent or some other legal guardian. We often give little thought to the men and women on the fringes, perhaps behind bars, and their children. But those impacts are real and children feel it intensely. The hope is that our efforts might take some of the sting out of a set of circumstances children had no hand in choosing.

If nothing else, receiving an age-appropriate gift makes the world they live in just a tiny bit easier and that goes for older children as well. We tend to gravitate toward the small children because they’re cute and innocent and they’re also cheaper and easier to buy gifts for all things being equal. For the older kids, on the cusp of adulthood, they don’t call up the “warm and fuzzies” in us and so we don’t much bother with these youngsters, but we should. Everyone wants to feel like they matter. 

Everyone attending the Holiday Breakfast at the Marino Center on December 17^th will be treated to a great meal by the good people at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church. Bring an unwrapped gift for a child (male or female) 2 -17 years of age and let’s have a wonderful holiday together.