Holiday Breakfast December 18th
By Mayor Albert Kelly
I know the holiday season can be a very busy time- it can
also be a very stressful season. I imagine this is so for a lot reasons,
whether the angst comes from family members trying your patience and pressing
your buttons or the stress of playing host and hoping all of your guests are
comfortable and happy. Sometimes the stress involves shopping and trying to
make your way through crowded stores or in trying to figure out what gifts to
buy for family and friends.
These things can all be stressful to be sure, but it is the
type of stress that I consider the good kind of stress. I say that because
whatever it is, this type of stress will pass come the New Year when all the
gifts have been opened or perhaps returned, after the food has been cooked and
hopefully eaten, after the guests have gone home. Other than taking down some
holiday decorations, we go back to our regular routines after the holidays.
But there is a bad type of stress, the kind that comes with
feelings of failure or shame. It is the type of stress that parents feel when
they know that they can’t give their children the types of gifts they would
like to and in some cases; they can’t give any gifts at all. It is the kind of
stress that comes with knowing you’ve disappointed your child by what you’re
not- by what you don’t have- by what you can’t give.
Sometimes it’s the voice inside our heads, the conversation
we have with ourselves about ourselves. It’s a month of TV ads that prime us as
consumers and remind us of the expectations that come with our modern version
of the holidays. Whatever it is, it need not be an occasion where parents and
children feel bad.
That’s part of why, on December 18th at the
Marino Center (10 Washington St) from 8am to 10am, I will be hosting a holiday breakfast
and inviting all people of goodwill to come and break bread with us. The price
of admission to the holiday breakfast is one unwrapped gift (toys, devices,
games, etc.) for boys and 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 families
in need and distributed by the Bridgeton Area PAL and Tri-City Boxing, two
local youth-serving organizations. Whenever possible, gifts will be provided to
parents to give to their children because dignity matters and because no caring
parent wants to see disappointment in the eyes of their children.
There’s also the absent parent who is incarcerated. We tend
to give little thought to the men and women behind bars or their children for
that matter. Even assuming someone is justly serving time for breaking the law,
whatever they did is not the only thing that is true about them, they’re
someone’s parent and their children suffer- our generosity can help just a
little.
Sometimes it’s all about getting “the smile. As adults, we
can all remember a time as children waking up on Christmas morning and bounding
down the stairs or the hallway bursting with excitement thinking about what
gifts were awaiting us- that instant when we started ripping through the
wrapping paper to get to the surprise within- we had “the smile”. Does it get
any better than that?
If you’re like me, when thinking about the children who, but
for the generosity of others, wouldn’t have a holiday gift, I go straight for
the younger children in my mind’s eye, the ones young enough to have “feet” in
their pajamas. But over time, I’ve made it a priority to remember the older
children as well, our “tweens” and our teens, even the 16 and 17 year-olds that
society might be inclined to charge as adults under the right circumstances.