Giving gifts, at Christmas as at other times, is still the rewarding experience that it has always been.  Giving a gift satisfies a basic need inside us to please other people.  Giving Christmas gifts to charity is the ultimate manner to achieve this feeling of having done a good deed.  The everyday experience of giving a gift to someone that you know and love is a wonderful experience from choosing the gift right down to seeing the recipient’s face when he or she opens the gift and sees what it is.  When giving gifts to charity, at Christmas or at other times, part of the process is missing.  Charitable gifts are bought, but then they disappear into some sort of vacuum through which the giver does not have the experience of watching the receiver open the gift.

Open To Imagination

The fact that the giver does not get to witness the unwrapping of the present can be a great advantage.  Normally, opening the present and seeing the reaction of the person receiving the gift is the gift for the person who has purchased the gift, but here’s an exercise to help us change all that.

When purchasing a Christmas gift for charity, carefully examine the description of the person or the family to whom the gift is destined.  Picture the children or the people, and imagine their home.  Now go out and buy something; either buy a gift for a Christmas charity that was on the list made by the charity, or choose something that would seemingly fit the description of the family or the person provided by the charity.

As you purchase the item(s), start imagining the reaction of the person for whom you are buying the gift.  Christmas charity organizations provide the family descriptions for this very reason; use the description to lead your imagination to the family in question.  As you wrap the gift(s), imagine the family receiving the presents on Christmas Day…imagine their faces and the happiness that will play across their eyes on Christmas morning.  Charity gifts are appreciated the same as any others—probably even more so.  Parents will truly delight in the happiness of their children as the children open gifts that seem to truly come from Santa.  Not only does your Christmas gift of charity offer a terrific gift to the children that receive them, but also the gift of happiness that the parents feel at seeing their children happy on Christmas morning.

This type of anonymous giving, this kind of ‘being Santa’ through Christmas gifts to charity is the most rewarding type of giving there is.  It’s the true spirit of Christmas—enjoy it!