No other time of the year do we spend as much money as we do in November through December, but no other time of the year do we think about others instead of ourselves as much as we do November through December. And charity and goodness are not confined to the getters and givers and gifts this time of year. We pass without thinking of them at all, all those patient and marvelous check-out clerks in discount stores, malls, and hardware stores. Think of it-armies of women and some men, standing hour after hour, day after day, punching in prices and sacking up purchases. Surely they have families of their own, for whom they are toiling in intolerable conditions so that they, too, can be among the generous givers of this special season.
Checkers are angels in disguise.
We see so many acts of kindness and so many thoughts of others at Christmas that they outshine the tinsel and drown out the blare of commercials, Somehow in the midst of bedlam maybe, just maybe, God does love a cheerful giver , and maybe there are many more of them that we may have thought. We don t read of the Magi getting gifts in return for those they brought. They didn t lead off any of the shepherd s sheep, or Joseph s donkey, and may not have even gotten hay for their camels. Joseph and Mary were traveling light, and had little or nothing to give. In giving they received.