How the (beep!) do you make happy Christmas memories in a homeless shelter? This was the first question asked as our special speaker from the local craft store concluded her presentation.
Eager to alleviate the misery of homeless families during the holiday season, volunteers from the nearby shopping mall visited the family shelter each Tuesday in December and demonstrated ways to make the holiday season merry and bright. Photos and completed crafts were displayed in participating stores and sometimes donations were collected which benefited the shelter – community engagement at it’s best.
Most of the shelter guests, who received incentives for attending the classes, genuinely enjoyed the classes which provided a welcome deviation from the typical Tuesday night support group. Sometimes the presentation was painfully impractical. The excited college student employed by the craft store and seeking to fulfill required community service hours came to the family shelter with gingerbread molds, frosting bags, candies, and a variety of sprinkles. She explained that with minimal effort moms and dads could create a warm, lasting family memory by making gingerbread houses and decorating the holiday home with their tasty creations. She carefully demonstrated the process and seemed oblivious to the scowls and rolled eyes of her students. There were no dads in our women’s shelter. The women had restricted access to the kitchen and all food that was not consumed had to be discarded. Many of the families shopped at the convenience store across the street – the only store within walking distance – which did not sell gingerbread or sprinkles. The irony of creating from gingerbread the one thing you most needed in reality – a house – was hard to swallow.
But the core issue was even more discouraging – how can you celebrate anything in a shelter? How can you create memories in a place that you hope your children will soon forget? The women in shelter without children often ignored the holiday or simply worked extra hours and appreciated the overtime compensation; but for moms with children it was difficult to hide from Christmas. To complicate the celebration, volunteer groups would bring Christmas (a terrible phrase from volunteer management world) weeks before the actual day of Christmas, so all gifts and parties and visits from Santa were long gone by the the 25th of December which was usually lonely and uneventful.
Whether you are celebrating the holiday with your family in a homeless shelter or simply under stressful circumstances, a few realities remain.
1. You cannot make a memory. The concept of making family memories is contrived by those selling products or experiences designed to do so. You cannot control what someone remembers or how they preserve an event in their hearts and minds. I have five children who are very close in age and they remember (or do not remember) family events in five different ways, some positive and some negative. We live in the present.
2. There is always something to celebrate. Look for and embrace the goodness of each day as it is. After the gingerbread presentation in shelter that Tuesday, the mothers present were encouraged to consider what their children enjoy about living in shelter. One young mother said that she could not think of anything that her two year old son, Jamal, enjoyed. All of us exclaimed at once – Jamal likes to swing! It was true – Jamal could sit in the swing on the playground outside for hours. So swing! No toy or visit from Santa or hand crafted gingerbread house would please Jamal more than sitting in the swing, pumping his chubby little legs and giggling at his mom. No child in our city would be happier on Christmas morning than Jamal, wrapped in his faded blue blanket and snuggling his one armed teddy bear on a swing in the shelter’s back yard.
As helpers, we regularly pity those living in poverty during the holiday season and go to great lengths to provide a manufactured Merry Christmas. Sometimes we de-value the goodness in whatever a family does have by deciding that it must be MORE in order to be valid and Christmas-worthy. We may transport to the family homeless shelter the same consumerism that makes Christmas so disappointing and dysfunctional in our own suburban homes.
There was real kindness and compassion in the hearts and actions of the wonderful volunteers who donated toys and baked cookies and decorated gingerbread houses and there was also great value in the traditions and resourcefulness of those living in the shelter – how do we appreciate both? How do we acknowledge and grieve the injustices in our society and donate and volunteer and serve while simultaneously highlighting and exalting the goodness and strengths in each beautiful, struggling family? How can we encourage one another to lay aside the pressure to conform to the ideal holiday season as described by advertisers and embrace and celebrate what we have in front of us? How do we strive to recognize the insufficiency and the people and resources that are missing but also embrace and rejoice in what we have, however small. How do we as neighbors desperately search for Joy and Peace together in all places at all times?
