Christmas

This time every year I remember the episode in which the Torkelsons contributed gifts to a group effort (I think it was their church's) to be charitable to a very poor, out-of-luck family. Just before Christmas the Torkelsons found a big bundle on their front porch, and many gifts, including the ones they donated, were wrapped up for them.

I thought it was just the saddest thing until that actually happened at an office where I worked once. We all brought presents for a "secret" family that one employee was supposed to find through some agency. Our switchboard operator, a single mother who had had lots of surgeries that year, brought as good a gift as the rest of us did. I went out of town for Christmas, but when I got back I discovered that the employee in charge had chosen the switchboard operator's family to receive our gifts. They tell me she cried a lot.