Toys for Tots and Toddlers

Toys for Tots and Toddlers

It’s easy this time of year to get overly involved with shopping, buying, and spending. Those inclinations aren’t unique to Americans or to Christians or to twenty-first centurians.

Two hundred years ago, William Wordsworth railed against acquisitiveness in his poem, “The World Is Too Much with Us,” when he wrote, “The world is too much with us; late and soon,/ Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;/ Little we see in Nature that is ours;/ We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”

Leaving aside wasted powers and sordid boons, many Americans still do get and spend too much even in these recessionary times. Recession or no, credit cards or no, promises and commitments to cut back or no, during the Christmas-holiday season most of us tend to over-do, over-spend, over-indebt ourselves to Visa, Master Card, to whatever.

None of that is a good thing any more than it was back in the nineteenth century when Wordsworth was railing against “getting and spending” in a different context.

Americans’ context in A.D. 2010 is, as always, our friends, family, and, yes, ourselves, which is all very normal.

Equally “normal” during this upcoming festive season is to “share the wealth,” not that mandated sharing envisioned by our president but a true, grass roots sharing in which we, first, insure that family will be provided for but not over-indulged and then, if there is any surplus in the bank account, share with the less prosperous, particularly with the kids in America who may have drawn the wrong life card and who face a bleak festive season.

One terrific way to share the bounty, to give what we can afford or a little more than we can afford to make a child’s Christmas morning less bleak, is to cough up a few bucks or a toy to the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation. Their website, http://www.toysfortots.org/, gives toy drop-off sites as well as monetary donation sites.

It’s easy to say, “Merry Christmas” to people. It’s only a little more difficult to help make a Christmas a little bit merrier to some kid.

Isn’t it worth the effort?

(http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=2547)